


If There's a Reason I'm Still Alive

by stellahibernis



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Mythology, M/M, Minor Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Minor Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Sort of anyway, some things endure for fourteen billion years, their reality became our mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:48:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellahibernis/pseuds/stellahibernis
Summary: Fourteen billion years ago, in a world where they didn’t count the years, there were two lovers, happy and fearless. Then came the war that drew them in, made soldiers out of lovers, shattered their world and spat them out, forever changed.One of them was taken; burned and dragged into the nameless void. The other one survived; escaped the breaking world and made it into a newborn universe where the dance of gravity and creation was only beginning.Now, the one that escaped is trying to find purpose among human beings that are both strange and fascinating, but can't quite help him replace the missing piece of his soul.Now, the one that was taken emerges from limbo, fractured but not destroyed, unsure of how to live again.





	1. Lost But Not Forgotten

**Author's Note:**

> Twice makes a tradition of me celebrating the twelve days of Christmas with a fic that has twelve chapters and gets updated daily until January fifth (it's mostly written, so I'll be able to stick to the posting schedule unless something extremely unlikely happens). Another part of the tradition seems to be that the contents of the fic aren't seasonal at all.
> 
> This one has been stewing in my head for over a year, born from the concept of the Avengers as angels, and the idea of how our myths are born from us trying to explain something we don't quite understand. Throw in a question of what can last for fourteen billion years, and what will inevitably have changed, and here we are.
> 
> This is an AU, but the characters in my head are the MCU versions (+ Carol because I like her). Rating is for the future chapters, and as you can see from the tags, there are other pairings, but Steve/Bucky is the focus for the whole fic.

It begins with a step. Or more precisely, it begins with two steps, each of them taking one. 

One of them starts among billowing dust under a scorching sun. He coughs a little when he tastes the earth on his tongue, feels it gathering in the corner of his eye. It’s a reflex but not one born out of necessity. It’s learned, stemming from his desire to blend in. To make everyone believe that he has lungs sensitive to particles in the air, that his eyes need protection from the bright light, same as everyone else’s. As if he couldn’t just change from a being of flesh and blood and bones into into one made out of stardust and gravity. He straightens his hat over his blond hair cropped short, takes another step. Toward north, toward east.

The other appears from the void, formless and confused, letting himself be pulled into the form this world suggests in his mind. He sinks into the snow under black sky adorned by stars. It’s quiet as it only gets in winter when deep banks of snow muffle every sound. The wind has died down and there is nothing but the frozen wasteland as far as his eyes can see, and he can see far. He’s not the only living being that he can sense, but he is the only one not struggling to stay alive in this cold. He’s experienced much worse. He squares his shoulders, by now used to the heavier left side, and takes another step. Toward south, toward west.

They’re moving toward each other, even without knowing it. It is the unlikeliest thing of all, that they can’t feel it, but maybe it’s just familiarity; they’ve moved toward each other since before the dawn of time.

 

* * *

 

He comes to New York on a bike, a Harley that’s seen better days and wouldn’t run for anyone else. Or almost anyone. Among seven and a half billion people a dozen of them are like a drop in an ocean. Easy to hide.

It’s been decades since he last was in the city. He’s mostly spent the time wandering and sometimes just waiting, thinking and not thinking. Letting the time wash over him. For him the decades are long and short at the same time, merely a blip in the scale of his existence, yet endless because it’s hard to find anything to occupy his mind. Hard to let himself get attached to anyone when their lives are so fleeting. 

He thinks back, to a time and place before there even was time in this universe, before the chaos that ripped everything apart. He thinks back to the world where everyone was like him, made of thoughts and gravity and stardust, not flesh and blood encasing beautiful souls. How different it was, compared to the now, where a few handfuls of them are stranded, refugees unable to leave, confined by the borders of this new universe.

The ones who fell out of the sky but didn’t  _ fall. _

Sometimes he thinks of the stories people of this world tell and marvels at how accurate they are, despite the fact that all they reflect happened before this Earth was even formed. The stories about a war and flaming swords. Stories about wings and falling. Even the names are eerily accurate. 

He well knows that some things don’t allow themselves to be forgotten.

***

It’s easy to hide if you can be almost anything you can think of, easy to blend in when people want to believe you are what you look like and not something else, not something out of stories and myths. It’s easy to hide when you’re a drop in the ocean.

Hiding in plain sight is a proverb that’s true enough, he thinks as he stands a little to the side from the entrance to the Grand Central Station, looking up to the skyscraper bearing the name Stark emblazoned on its side. He’s known several Starks, all different and yet the same, all of them his friends, even if it’s never easy between them. He might as well go up.

No one pays attention to him as he strides into the building and past the security checks without being stopped. The elevator moves without him pressing any buttons as he follows the familiar presence. He finds his way into a room strewn with machine parts, a redheaded woman in a black sheath dress standing in the middle of it, frowning at her tablet, talking to the man tinkering with something at the large table. She’s a human being, he is not.

There’s another shape he can see over the man, like an afterimage or a double developed film. The glowing armor and strong wings.

As he steps in, the woman turns to go and smiles slightly at him as she passes. She won’t remember he was there at all if he doesn’t want her to. It’s not a difficult trick, but he tries not to do it too often, tries not to violate people’s privacy like that.

Stark turns to look at him too, and his human form is familiar from seven decades ago and not, familial resemblance in features, the same soul that has lasted for billions of years. 

“About time you crawled back to civilization,” Stark says. “You look exactly the same. What name do you go by these days?”

“Steve.”

Stark huffs. “You’ve been Steve for almost hundred years now. Not getting bored?”

“Guess I don’t care so much,” he says, and it’s true, he doesn’t.

Stark looks at him, sharp. “You’ve got to find something to do, you’ll lose it if you continue like this. Apathy isn’t good for people, and it’s not good for us.”

“I suppose you’d know. I don’t need any revelations, though.”

“So why are you here?”

“Just to say hello, I guess. Felt like coming.”

“That’s how it goes, our wings take us wherever we need to be.”

“Actually, I walked and rode a motorcycle.”

“Of course you did,” Stark says, sounding amused. 

“So which Stark are you these days?” he asks, changing the subject.

“Tony.”

“And Howard is supposed to be your, what?”

“Dear old dad.”

“I think I preferred Howard, actually.”

“That’s a snap judgment, good for you. But it’s all me, all the same as then.”

“No, you’re not,” he says, certain, and Stark grins.

“No, I’m not.”

Steve, because that’s his name now, more than the one he had in the old world, leaves then. He’s been alone for so long that company is tricky, and Stark’s company doubly, maybe triply, so. It’s easier to wander down the streets, to get lost in the swiftly moving rush of bodies.

It’s not that Stark is wrong, Steve is well aware that apathy isn’t good. He’s always known it, but his problem has tended to be finding a balance between caring too much and not letting himself care at all. The last time, when there was a war and Tony was Howard he hadn’t been too successful at it. He’d fought at the war, and he’d been too big of a presence there in general and for some people especially. It had meant he’d had to disappear. It’s only now, seven decades later by human reckoning, that he finds himself back.

He wonders if the others of his kind have similar problems to his. After all, they’ve all been stranded and hurt by their losses. Some of them seem to do better; Stark has taken to living in this world like a duck into water especially since the beginning of the industrial age. These days his revelations are technological marvels instead of divine insight, but it works for him; he’s managed to build a whole dynasty just by himself. The rest of them aren’t nearly as visible, but they are around, moving on in a way Steve doesn’t seem to be able to do.

He feels like he’s still tethered back to their old world that is now gone, the whole universe ripped to shreds. He thinks of his love, the other half of his soul, the one with keen sight and an instinct to protect.

The one he saw fall into the abyss, burning and screaming.

It’s a sight he still sees, as if burned on his retinas. It’s a pain that he still carries, and probably will for the rest of his life, however long that might be. Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t been so strong, so full of the instinct to survive that let him find the way into this new universe. Sometimes he wishes he’d fallen into the nothingness as well. That would at least match the emptiness inside him.

***

He comes out of his thoughts when he senses another presence, and immediately spots a familiar figure coming toward him, wearing a blue winter coat, red and yellow scarf around her neck, golden hair shining in the sun. As people pass her they glance at her, something drawing their attention, and Steve wonders if it’s that she looks like an attractive woman, or that they sense the same thing he does, the presence beyond flesh.

She always was the fiercest and most tenacious person he ever knew. If he’s supposed to be the soldier, then she is a warrior, the difference all important.

“Is it still Catrina?” he asks, as they fall into a step next to each other.

“No, it’s Carol now.”

“Still going with alliteration, I see. And I’m Steve now.”

“Still?”

“You never met me as Steve.”

“No, but I talk to Stark occasionally. Good to see you have decided to surface.” She smiles at him.

“It was time, I guess.”

They end up sitting at the top of the Statue of Liberty, for some reason she has always liked the spot. They watch the darkness come in and look up to the stars they can see despite the light pollution, unlike the local people.

Steve has always liked her company; they are two peas in a pod, different and same. It means that they sometimes argue, even loudly, but they always respect each other. It’s easy and comfortable here with her, just sitting and not talking. Steve feels close to her, even if they both keep the barriers between their minds up. It would be overwhelming to let someone in, Steve knows, after so long.

“I feel like there’s something coming,” he tells her. “As if something has been calling me to come here. Not the way we can reach for each other, not that precise, but it’s there.”

“That’s how it goes, you should remember. Sometimes we shape the event, sometimes the events pull us. Same with them,” she says and nods toward the city. “We are just more aware of it.”

He’s quiet for a while, and then says, “I hate all that destiny crap.”

She smiles a crooked smile, understanding. “I know you do.”

After that Carol rises to her feet, as she well knows he doesn’t deal well with sympathy, and as he looks he can see her wings unfolding, all red and gold, and she becomes more and less at the same time, less visible to human eyes, more of a pressure inside his head.

He looks after her as she jumps into the air and follows her trajectory to the edge of space. She has always loved to fly.

He makes his way down, climbing instead of jumping. He hasn’t wanted to fly in decades.

 

* * *

 

He has no idea where he is, only that it’s a completely different universe from where he came from. He emerged from true darkness to something people around here probably consider darkness, but to him was brightest he’d seen in eons, in lifetimes. The white snow reflecting the starlight was just the start.

When he emerged he instinctively knew what he needed to look like to blend in, and so he did, solidifying to the level of this world’s matter, folding his wings out of sight, building barriers around his mind. It still took him some time to truly understand and to be able to mimic the humans, the breathing, the eating, the body heat. All those details have by now slotted into his mind, have become a part of him, part of what he needs to be in this world.

He can’t control everything, only morph it into the closest approximate of his true form, and so he keeps his left side hidden, covered with sleeves and gloves. No need for people to see the glint of metal.

He could have stuck staying in the wilderness, or even taken off, flown to the moon or even farther, but he doesn’t want solitude now. Not after the long dark and cold, after he was forgotten and the torment and pain had stopped.

He travels toward west, from the snowy wilderness of Russia to the cities of Europe before turning around, heading back to Russia where it feels easier to get lost in himself, easier to not remember. He doesn’t want to remember the darkness he was dragged into during the last moments of the war, doesn’t want to remember the fire and fall. Sometimes he still does; those memories are not the kind to stay away forever, but now and here, in this new and different world, there some satisfaction that he feels.

He has gotten away, and he knows there will be no pursuit.

There are other things he doesn’t think about, the war and the shape of the perfect soldier, shimmering with purpose. He doesn’t think of anything that came before, the glowing days and happiness, flying among the star fields, two minds folded into one.

There’s no use remembering, because there is no way back, not to his birth world that was torn into shreds by war and discord eons ago.

***

He keeps the barriers around his mind up constantly, trying to make himself as small as he can, trying to limit his senses closer to the people of this world. That’s why he only senses her when she’s right there, standing in the middle of a bridge across the Neva, red hair bright in the middle of a rainy gray day.

He remembers her; remembers that she too was taken, and for a moment he wonders if that’s what this world is for, a refuge for those passed through hell. He dismisses the idea, there is a sense of purpose to this world that has nothing to do with them. He figures it’s a pure chance that has brought them here. Nevertheless, he’s happy to see her, happy to see that he’s not the only one that escaped.

Her name forms in his mind and the remembered image; the secret keeper. As if knowing he’s about to call her, she looks at him, pointed and furious, and he doesn’t say anything, just follows her along the streets and into a house surrounded by a fence and a garden.

She motions him to sit in a comfortable chair and makes them tea the Russian way, only fancier than he’s so far seen, with an intricately patterned samovar. When they’re both sitting comfortably, warm cups in hand, she finally speaks.

“You can call me Natalia.”

She becomes a guide of a sort for him, a guide into this new existence. She helps him become more solid, and teaches him to create a new identity. From her he finds he’s been on the right track, trying to find a way to fit in among the locals.

“You start with a name,” she says. “Choose one for yourself and then build up from that. Some of us want our new names to be close to what we used to be called, others want a completely different kind of a name. Some of us periodically change them, others stick with one.”

He already knows he will want a name that sounds nothing like his used to be. She’s comfortable in her Russian guise, and he finds himself settling into her accent, fitting in. He could be Russian too. Only he hears some tourists talking as they pass by, American accent flowing easy and comfortable, somehow settling into the middle of his sternum. 

It’s that afternoon that he decides to become a James.

***

“You said there are others,” he begins one morning.

“So there are, a few handfuls of us left. The ones that managed to survive both the war and the collapse and drag ourselves into the new universe that was being born at the same time.” She’s quiet for a while, thinking. “There used to be more of us, but many decided to truly become immersed within this world, they chose to become people like everyone else and lived their lives, and now they are somewhere else.”

“Do you know everyone that’s left here?” he asks.

“We all know everyone. Not now, though. You’ve kept yourself hidden, so I doubt anyone has sensed you yet.” She hands him a flash of images, some of them he recognizes and others he doesn’t. “We are the last ones left, and there won’t be more. This universe allows us to survive but not procreate.”

“Probably better that way, considering what we did to our own world,” he says, settling deep into the chair.

She’s not done yet, though. There’s one more thing she has to hand out to him.

“He’s here,” she says, and there’s no room for mistaking who she means, even if she doesn’t emphasize the words with an image.

He’s quiet for a long while, thinking whether he wants to know more, and decides against it.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he finally says, and he’s grateful when she nods, understanding.


	2. Fourteen Billion Years

Steve doesn’t remember falling in love. Sometimes he wonders if it’s because the memories have deteriorated, outshone by the brightness of being in love, or if it’s just because it never really happened, it always was there. 

He wonders sometimes, when he lets himself think about it at all, whether being in love there, in his old world, his first world, was different from being in love in his current world. It feels like it was, but he can’t tell if there’s some fundamental difference or if it’s just about the difference in form, the different physicality. He has loved here too, and it feels the same and different, and certainly being with someone is different.

Here love can be both spiritual and physical, but the people can’t join their minds, not like Steve one used to do. He remembers floating in clouds, hands clasped, being more like one single being than two separate ones for those blissful moments and hours. There’s been nothing to compare, not in the first world or this second, strangely beautiful and wonderful though it is by its own right.

He remembers lying on the diamond sand, just the two of them, looking up into the heart of the galaxy, feeling love like gravity, similar in that they didn’t need to be touching to feel its effect. They were connected, had been since soon after birth, during the perfect innocence of youth and into the bliss they found one day when their eyes met and everything was suddenly different. There had been no other choice but to open up to each other fully, to take that step into knowing everything about someone, giving everything of yourself in return.

He thought it was perfect then, even if some people warned them it was dangerous to tie yourself fully into another, to let someone else so close. That even if you could do it, it didn’t mean you should. In the endless peaceful days of their youth it didn’t seem like much of a risk. It felt like they had all the time in the world. 

Some had said there was pain in their future, because love might not last, and they should protect themselves from the fallout. Steve still scoffs at the idea; to hold back and not feel all of it when it is there struck him as wrong and cowardly. Back then he’d been so sure that whatever else might happen, their love would last, and so he’d given himself into it, they both had.

And it had last, until the terrible day of fire and abyss. Love had endured, but they hadn’t. Still, even if it’s now gone and there is a hole inside him, an ache that refuses to go away, he doesn’t regret it, even if he understands the warnings much better. He doesn’t have to wonder what they could have had, because they did have it all. 

He’ll be forever grateful for that.

***

Steve can’t stay idle forever, Stark was right in saying so. He finds himself an apartment in the corner of a converted factory building in Brooklyn, and then sets out to finding something to do. The army is out of question, the modern tracking and medical technology so sophisticated that he would probably ring all kinds of bells sooner or later. Besides, he’s not sure he agrees with any of the wars going on anyway. The second World War had been a whole another thing.

He wants to help, though, and there are plenty of jobs for volunteers. He spends nights walking the streets of New York, distributing food and blankets to homeless, and if he stops a few muggings on the way no one needs to be any wiser.

After a shift he senses another familiar presence, and there’s a man, with dark skin and a card identifying him as a social worker with the VA. Steve smiles, unsurprised. Again a job that has something to do with healing. Healing minds, in this case, probably with an astonishing recovery rate. The man steps closer, offering his hand to shake as if they hadn’t known each other since the early days of this universe. As if they hadn’t watched together this planet form out of debris and stardust, dancing with gravity.

“Sam Wilson,” the man introduces himself, and Steve grasps his hand, and sees for a second a flicker of silver wings, strong and sleek.

They end up at a tiny diner, open in the early hours of morning.

“I would have appreciated if you checked in every once in a while,” Sam gripes, and Steve has nothing to say to it, since it’s true. 

“You haven’t changed at all,” Steve says instead.

“I’d say the same, but it’s not true, not really,” Sam observes.

“It’s, I don’t know. The war in Europe, you know what a mess it was.”

“Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of not so fun decades working on the aftereffects. Can’t make it all go away, but I help a little.”

“You’ve been working with veterans all this time?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, here and there. But go on, what happened to you?”

“I got too close, I guess. It was either to settle into it fully, choose to really be a human instead of pretending, or get away, and for all that there might have been a lot of good things to be had, I couldn’t. Can’t still.”

“Almost fourteen billion years and you’re still hung up on a dead guy,” Sam observes and Steve chokes out a laugh.

He’s always appreciated this of Sam, that he doesn’t sidestep his loss, doesn’t dismiss it but can still say things like this that don’t make it okay, but maybe bearable. 

“Ask me in the next universe over, maybe then it’ll be different,” Steve grins, feeling lighter.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sam says, dry as desert, and they fall into a comfortable silence.

 

* * *

 

James thinks it probably proves he’s an idiot, but he does reach out. 

He’s sitting on the floor at the small attic apartment he’s acquired, closes his eyes and lowers the barrier around his mind. Just a little, letting him observe but keeping him hidden. Carefully and gradually he reaches forward. There’s Natalia, somewhere in the city, and he winds past her. Going further, he finds others, some of whom he doesn’t know, others bringing back memories. He doesn’t linger with any of them, doesn’t make his presence known. 

And then, it’s like grabbing a firebrand, he finds the one he was looking for. He backs out immediately and slams the barriers back in place, but it’s too late. The memories crash over him, immediate and intense, and he can’t push them back now like he has done so far.

He remembers them flying up to the clouds, iridescent under the setting sun, the flash of pure white wings at the corner of his eye. It had been beautiful that day, it always was but there had been something special then, maybe just a premonition of how things would change. He’d turned to look, and it had been the same as always, it had been completely new, their eyes locking into each other. It had been the only thing to do, to open his mind completely, and they’d joined then, had become one. It had been the most intense bliss, the most intense everything he’d felt before or has felt since.

Now, up in the attic in a whole another world, lit by the pale winter sun, he falls on his back, unable to stay upright. It’s overwhelming, the memory so clear that it feels almost the same as reality, and the reaction of this new solid flesh and blood body brings it to a different dimension. Blood rushes to his groin and he’s aching and hard in seconds. He remembers the sun of their world, remembers grasping hands and falling through the clouds, laughing and giddy, and he’s coming without a touch, gasping for breath that he doesn’t actually need.

He curls up on his side, and ignoring the stickiness on his skin tries to recover. In retrospect he thinks he shouldn’t have reached out, but he had to know. It’s always been like this, watching, making sure everything is fine. Apparently that is one instinct that hasn’t been burned out of him. Now in the relative post-orgasmic calm he turns the image in his mind,  the glimpse he saw before backing away. He doesn’t think he was spotted, since he sensed sleep, but there was also loneliness, and yearning that scares him. 

There was undeniable unhappiness, and he’s not sure if it can be repaired. He doesn’t know if anything can be repaired.

He should have at least expected the intensity, should have prepared for it, because it’s nothing new. The love they had, it always burned so brightly it was difficult to stand sometimes. He remembers moments when every self-preservation instinct told him to run away, but he hadn’t. Back then he thought it was worth burning for.

And later, all too soon, he really had burned.

***

He goes back to Natalia one evening, and has stepped through the gate before he realizes she has a guest, and not just any guest, one of their kind. For a second he contemplates on leaving, but the door opens and she beckons him inside. It is too late anyway to leave without them sensing him. Apparently it is time for him to expand his social circle.

In Natalia’s comfortable living room is a man; short brown hair, casual, even shabby clothes and piercing eyes. James knows that last feature carries over from beyond. They never knew each other except by sight, but James can tell there are similarities in them, the capability to see far. He holds onto his mind’s barrier tight, not keen on having his insides turned over, and the man seems to realize and respect it, since soon enough he relaxes into his chair, and looks at James like a human would.

“Well, shit,” the man says, calm but sincere. “I figured that Cap coming back to civilization from wherever he was hiding for the last seventy years would be the biggest surprise of the year.”

Natalia gestures at them. “James, this is Clint, Clint, James.”

James nods and sits into one of the vacant chairs, his mind racing. It takes no genius to guess who Clint is referring to by Cap. The military ranks here don’t really translate into what they had, but it’s close enough.

Clint continues, “Did you know he reappeared in New York, Tasha?”

“What do you take me for, of course I knew,” Natalia scoffs. “Sam told me he’s seen Steve. I’m surprised you knew, you’ve been focusing on everything but the rest of us lately.”

James silently files the name into his mind, along with everything else he unsuccessfully tries to not think of.

“I swung by Stark before coming here,” Clint shrugs. “Do you know why he disappeared in first place anyway? I heard he was around fighting the Nazis and then just vanished, faked his death to the humans he fought with and went to ground and nobody could find him.”

“No specifics,” she admits, and James can tell it irks her. “But we all know he’s been moody ever since we came here.”

She glances at James, who finds it even harder to not think of all the might have beens.

***

Later, when Clint has gone his own way, Natalia tells James how he’d been the one to help her after she’d freed herself.

“It was right before the end of the war. I was only regaining myself when it all shattered and we had to fight just to survive. We made our way here, like many others didn’t, and he was with me all the time at first. I owe him a lot.”

“Like I owe you?” James asks.

She quirks her mouth. “Well, you are good company. Besides, it’s easier here, with intelligent life and the rest. All the coalescing hydrogen clouds were pretty but it got boring after a few million years.”

“Guess we’ll see how you’ll feel when you need a favor.”

“Maybe,” she smiles. “But I was serious about the company. Far as I know, you and I are the only ones to come back from the abyss. Everyone else that fell or was taken stayed there. There’s value in that.”

“Hard for someone who hasn’t experienced it to understand,” James agrees.


	3. Forking Paths

Steve wakes up, and it’s difficult to breathe. He’s spent thousands of years in a human body, ever since there were people intelligent enough that talking to them became enjoyable, and sometimes his body forgets he doesn’t have the same needs as humans do. He doesn’t need to breathe, not really, and yet here he is, his body heaving and aching. Here he is, with his skin tingling and balls full, just a moment from tipping over to a release.

It was a dream, he thinks, and yet it felt real, all the bittersweet memories coming back with a sudden clarity. He remembers his unconscious mind coming into contact with something, with someone, but it is impossible. He wishes he didn’t remember, wishes that every detail wasn’t still etched in his mind. It would be so much easier, far less painful.

It feels unfair that every moment of thrill, joy and perfection of being with someone else, of giving yourself to them completely, is still clear as they day he lived them even when there’s no getting them back. It feels unfair that it all can tip over to this new existence and make his human form react, set off by a fragment of a barely remembered dream.

Still, it is what it is, and he could do away with the arousal by shifting back into his true form for a while, by forsaking the bonds of flesh, but he doesn’t. Instead he grabs a hold of his cock and lets himself remember how it was to be one in mind with someone, and not the part where it was the complete opposite of loneliness he feels these days. No, he lets himself remember the rush, the spinning and the bliss. 

He comes over his fist, gasping and panting, and there are tears in his eyes. It’s not the first time he’s cried, but it’s the first time he’s cried over the loss that has sat heavy in his soul ever since the dawn of time. It’s the first time he lets himself.

It’s like the sexual release has worked as a release for everything, breaking down the barrier he’s set between himself and the human form he’s been wearing. He’s never before let these two parts fully mix, hasn’t let the concept of human sex mix with his memories of joining with another back at home.

He’s still himself, and he’s also more of a human than he ever remembers being, closer to really being what he looks like, and he feels more settled than he has since he first shifted into a human form. He’s avoided making that step for a long time, but now he knows it probably was inevitable. After all, he’s been close to finding a balance before, seven decades earlier. Back then he ran, but now there’s no running anymore.

He doesn’t really know what it means for him yet.

***

It’s a familiar cycle for Steve by now, coming out of apathy to find something like a purpose. Usually it lasts for a while, a few decades at most, before he finds himself back to yearning for nothing, taking refuge in the wilderness, or traveling among the stars back when he still felt like flying.

The last time he found a purpose for himself was over seventy years ago, when humanity had been in more peril than usual. Most of the time he doesn’t bother mixing his business with theirs, but then he’d been incapable of just watching what might happen.

For all that he’s basically immortal compared to the people of this world, he and his kind aren’t omnipotent. They can influence people, which makes it possible for them to live among the humans without being detected, but they can’t do it on the grand scale any more effectively than a well-spoken and charismatic human being can. Hence, he chose the name Steve Rogers, enlisted, and made his way into an experimental program for human enhancement. It didn’t work very well, and the project was scrapped in few short years, Steve being considered the only successful subject. But it did allow him to be just a bit more, just a bit stronger, faster and smarter than he should have been if he was actually a human. It enabled him to help.

For two years he fought and did his part to ensure that the Nazis were defeated. It wasn’t too much in a grand scale, he knew it then and knows it now, but it was something at least. He had a team of loyal men, and he felt comfortable among them, even if he never felt as much at ease as he had during the previous war he’d fought, in another world. He’d known he’d never find anyone better to watch his back than he’d had back then.

He knew all along that by the end of the war he’d have to stage his own death, just to give everyone a closure when he inevitably would disappear. Only as time passed, he was loathe to do it, since there was companionship with his team, and there was Peggy.

She always seemed to shine to Steve, bright and fierce, and he was charmed by her spirit and her competence. He found himself falling for her, found himself spending time with her and not thinking about anything or anyone else. He loved it, loved the feeling, and he loved her.

Sometimes he looked at her and wondered if it was because of her relatively short life that she shone so brightly. She had to use all the fire.

He never forgot that they were ultimately incompatible, fundamentally different kind of beings. He also knew he had a choice, that he could erase that difference. He wouldn’t be the first to do it, not by a long shot. There had been more of them, more of his kind, living in this new universe, practically immortal. Some of them had decided they didn’t want to be that anymore, and they’d chosen to truly become human beings and had lived their lives and passed on. Steve knew it was possible to go through that change, and he fully considered it.

When all was said and done, he wasn’t at all sure he’d ever again find something or someone else that could make him forget the pain he was carrying inside his soul. And maybe that was the reason that tipped his decision. It was too much of a burden to place on someone without them knowing it.

There was a moment, hectic and frantic and they kissed. She kissed him, and he wanted nothing more than to pass through, become a human being like her and see if they could make a life together. He wanted it then, and yet he knew that ultimately he couldn’t. So he faked his death; he flew a plane into ice and walked away.

He disappeared for seventy years, and now he’s back, trying to find some other kind of purpose.

 

* * *

 

As weeks go by, James settles into his body, feeling more and more comfortable in his assumed form. Natalia encourages it, telling him it’ll help him solidify in his mind if he pays attention to how things physically feel. He’s been in the void and in pain for so long that every little thing that’s good is like a balm on his soul.

He takes walks in the mornings, finds places to watch the sunrise and absorb the light. As spring advances, there are birds that sing, adding to the soundscape that he’s building inside his head. He listens to music, reads books and sits at a cafe at a busy square, watching people living their daily lives. He eats and drinks, savoring every new taste on his tongue.

He talks to people, old and young, learning the way they see this world, their lives that to him seem short as a blink. Sometimes he finds a quiet place and lies on the ground, listening to the planet, feeling the slow crawl of the tectonic plates or looking up, counting the stars and galaxies.

There are days that are good, wonderful really. And there are days that are just the opposite.

Sometimes it feels like the abyss, the void, is everywhere around him, ready to snag him away the moment he lets down his guard. Sometimes he dreams of fire and burning, how the agony didn’t stop even when the fire was snuffed out, how it felt like not being able to fly because his left side was gone.

Sometimes he dreams of anguish and terror in the eyes he knew better than his own, and how he’d prayed that the void would close around him faster, before the hand reaching for him grasped him. He was lost already, he knew it then, and he wanted to be the only one lost. That had been a wish he’d been granted at least.

There are days when he walks among the people, looking as whole as any of them, and knows he’s been shattered. He knows that even if he’s pulled himself together, there are pieces missing and the ones he still has are barely held together.

There are times that are horrible, but they’re not all he has. He has good days, and he will have to make them be enough, because the only other option is to let himself drift away, and now that he’s got a hold of himself again he means to never let go.

***

James sticks with Natalia, and she is right, it helps to be able to talk to someone who’s gone through similar experiences and has made it back, has survived. As time goes by he learns that she too has difficult days still, but that it gets better. She understands how he feels like he’s a twisted version of himself, how he’s not managed to piece all of himself together, and she accepts it. She accepts him just as he is, and it’s exactly what he needs.

She still keeps things close to herself, doesn’t show it all to him as is her nature, but he doesn’t bear a grudge toward her about it. In turn she accepts he can’t talk about everything, and doesn’t pry too much, even if he’s certain that she sees more than he says. It is expected though, something one must accept when dealing with her.

It isn’t only her advice to him when she encourages him to find things that feel good, things that are purely of this world and don’t bear memories. It’s also how she lives her life, and she’s always willing to share that part with him. They spend many nights eating and drinking, talking and savoring everything. He escorts her to classical music concerts and ballet, and even if it’s not quite his preference, he’s still drawn by the beauty of motion, or the depth of the music. He does like that they dress up to the nines, and that people can’t help but look at them. He enjoys that the people looking has nothing to do with what they are underneath.

In the end, it doesn’t really come as a surprise when they end up sharing the more intimate kind of pleasure. After he takes her home one evening she invites him in as she usually does, but instead of pouring him a drink, she sets out to getting his clothes off. He doesn’t object, the opposite really, and soon enough he’s naked on his back on the floor and she’s riding him, fast and relentless. In that moment her beauty in his eyes is all about her human form, without her natural form superimposed over her as he usually sees when he’s looking at her.

Sex, like human beings here on Earth do it, is very much different from how it was on their own home world. There it was spiritual, minds becoming one. Here, there are more options. It can mean everything, be about bodies and hearts and souls, or it can just be physical, another way to feel good. And it does feel good, just to touch and be touched, to chase after the climax and not need it be any more complicated.

He keeps the barriers around his mind up tight, strong and reinforced, and he knows she’s doing the same. Neither one of them is keen on letting the other in, and it works just fine for him. He likes that it’s not complicated, despite the fact that their shared background is nothing but.

He likes that it doesn’t mean anything in the way that letting her inside his mind would, because he can’t do that with her. There’s only ever been one person like that for him, and he’s happy to keep it like that.

***

James has settled into his skin fairly well by the time summer is at hand. Truthfully it has happened faster than he thought it would, to be able to feel comfortable in a completely new form, but maybe it’s that he spent such a long time being nothing that he’s just been building himself up, not replacing himself with this new being.

He still struggles to not remember, to not think about what he used to have. He very decidedly doesn’t think of what there could be, if only he dared to show himself. It’s because he well knows it can’t be what it was, and he fears he’d only be a disappointment, showing up as a shadow of what he used to be. 

It’s easier now that he has a different name to use inside his head instead of the name that fell from his lips more than any other name. It’s easier to think of a Steve, someone he knows but doesn’t. James doesn’t know what he looks like when he walks among the people, and it puts a distance between them, even after he was stupid and let their souls touch. 

It makes it easier, but he never was any good at lying to himself. Hence he knows exactly what it is he truly wants. He just isn’t at all sure that he can get it.


	4. It’s Like Gravity

Steve might be closer to being a human than he has ever been, but it doesn’t mean he is anywhere near to fully being one. He can still see farther, sense more and in a different way from humans. And because he does, it’s not something he dismisses when his instincts tell him something is about to happen.

He’s been sensing it ever since winter, ever since he decided to come back from isolation. At first it was just a hint, something poking at the edge of his consciousness, but now it’s a pressure, undeniable and huge. The only comparable thing he’s ever felt was the oncoming war that destroyed his home and his life. Now though, it’s just an unspecified feeling, and he can’t see what could be the reason. Back then, he’d known a war was coming, they all had, but now there are no signs of an impending disaster. 

All he can do is wait, and feel the unease.

“You should go flying,” Sam says one day after Steve’s been complaining about not knowing. “I know you haven’t tried it in a long time, but it gives you a clearer picture about everything, helps you to look at things straight without the burden of flesh.”

“I guess it would,” Steve agrees, albeit he doesn’t really have to guess.

That night he finds himself at Rockaway Beach, looking across the sea. Now that he’s here, he knows that letting go of the human form and flying will give him answers, he’s as sure of it as he’s of anything. Yet a part of him hesitates, as if a voice telling him he might regret the knowledge. It’s only a small part though, and the one in control is his core nature, the inability to back away from a challenge. And this is a challenge, if not issued by anything other than the universe. But maybe those are the biggest and most important ones.

It’s difficult, forcing himself toward the form that he was born with. Many of his kind, like Sam and Carol, regularly shed their flesh and fly, but Steve hasn’t in a long time. Similarly as he’s been avoiding being too close to his human senses, he’s also avoided his own true form. He’s been living in-between, in a kind of limbo, and now letting that go actually hurts. Having his shields up, not fully committing to either form has kept him at arm’s length from most of things, and now that he’s shifting, becoming less solid and more in contact with everything around him, it’s almost too intense. It feels like being reborn.

It feels good too, he can’t deny it. He stretches his wings, and it feels like stretching all of himself, including his soul. He takes a step, then another, and suddenly his feet don’t touch the ground anymore, his wings are carrying him up.

He climbs higher, toward the edge of the atmosphere. He’s not solid, so he can’t really feel the wind on him as he does with his human body. Instead he feels the electric currents, the fluctuating magnetic field and the caress of starlight. There’s an explosion of unexpected joy; he’d forgotten how free it is just being himself, how the thrill and lightness wells up inside him. 

There are memories too, rushing to him, harder to ignore than they are in human form. There’s a sensory memory, of countless other flights, by himself and in company.

To distract himself from his memories, he reaches out, truly seeing in a way he usually pretends he can’t. He can sense all the living beings around him, all of them shining with their own particular light. Humans are bright, seven and a half billion stars forming galaxies where cities grow. There is a different kind of brightness, a different color when it comes to his kind. They’re easy to spot, and Steve lets his consciousness ease past them. 

Carol is flying too, higher than him and far away. Sam is walking in the streets of the city, looking for people that need help. Tony is at his tower, talking to the woman Steve saw when he visited, and he wonders if Tony has considered their different lifespans. 

There are others too, familiar as ever, even if he hasn’t seen them in decades and might not know their names anymore. Steve tastes the thunder on the roof of his mouth, feels the twin spin of elemental power and speed. There’s the uncertainty of form, and an anger that’s less sharp than his own, and more dangerous.

Across the sea there’s the watcher and the one veiled in secrets, unsurprisingly close to each other. And there’s another presence, one more than Steve expects.

It’s like a lance driven straight through him, because he knows this presence, knows it better than himself, and he never expected to feel it again, even after the dream he had a while back. It should be impossible, the memory of fire and fall that meant a devastating loss is still the clearest one he has, even after billions of years of making new memories.

The shock makes him forget himself for a moment, frozen in the air, and even if he’s not made of flesh and blood now, gravity still affects him. He falls, and he lets himself fall. He could right himself if he chose to, could break the descent with a beat of his wings but he doesn’t.

He plunges into the sea, still staying in his birth form, and lets himself drift downward.

 

* * *

 

James thanks his stars he’s alone in his apartment when it comes. He’s just woken up, enjoying a cup of coffee on his tiny balcony, when his mind is touched by another. The cup shatters on the tile and the hot liquid splashes onto his foot but he doesn’t care, because it feels like he’s been set ablaze.

It’s so much more intense when it’s not him in control, when he’s practically sneaked upon. 

To be fair, he’s not the only one that’s surprised. The shock echoes back to him in waves, carrying pain and disbelief, and for a moment he clings to it, lets himself be engulfed by it. There are images, hazy and fast, that pass across his eyes. Memories, but not his own; it’s him but seen from outside, and the recollection of the pain slams back into him, as well as the vertigo of falling.

He wrenches himself out of it, and rebuilds the barriers around his mind that he let fall down for a moment. He’s shaking and nauseous, holding onto the barrier of his balcony while closing his eyes. He tells himself he’s not falling, he’s here in his little apartment in Saint Petersburg. He’s safe.

He also knows that a bridge has been crossed, now Steve knows he’s here, knows he’s not dead. James knows sooner or later they will have to meet. 

Well, truth be told, if he knows anything about Steve, and despite the billions of years apart, he’s still confident he does, he knows he could tell Natalia to pass a message, to let Steve know to not come to him. He believes Steve would honor that request. Only he’d be lying to himself if he did it, since it’s not what he wants.

He settles back into his chair and calls up the memory of the moment their minds were in contact. He turns around the shock in his head and wonders how it must have felt for Steve, after eons of thinking James was gone. He also realizes the sense of vertigo wasn’t just him, wasn’t just a memory from before. Just now someone was falling, and it wasn’t him. At the end he sensed the ocean, the water’s careful embrace.

He doesn’t dare to reach out again, but there’s a pull in the middle of his sternum, a sudden need to know where he stands, where they both stand. A sudden need to get it over with.

After the sunset he sets out, shifts out of his flesh and flies toward west. As he goes he races toward the sun that seems to rise again, this time from the wrong direction. About three quarters across the Atlantic he finds what he’s looking for.

 

* * *

 

Steve is floating in the sea, not bothering to try and make it back to the surface. It’s not like he needs to breathe anyway. There are occasional schools of fish that pass him, flitting around in all kinds of patterns. It’s peaceful. The night turns into a morning, and the day passes.

It feels completely unreal, since he can’t quite believe he sensed what he did. There’s no presence in his mind now, and he’d be almost inclined to think he imagined it, except he knows he didn’t. It wasn’t imagination or hallucination, even if it feels like an impossibility. All he can do is relax and let the knowledge settle in his mind. There are decisions to be made, questions that he wants answered, but for now it’s enough to just know.

A few hours later one decision is taken away from him, not that he really minds. Namely the one concerning when and where they will meet.

The sun is setting, the waves above him are streaked with pink and gold, when the pressure in his head returns. It’s a comfortable pressure, as if something he’s been missing is slotting into place, and it’s true in a way. It’s not the same as it used to be, he can tell already, but how could it be? He’s different, they’re both different, separated by time and fire and who knows what other kinds of horror he can’t even begin to imagine. He has to admit he doesn’t know what they can be to each other anymore. All he has is hope.

A moment later Steve is not alone anymore, there’s a hand reaching for him, a left hand that no longer looks like he remembers. It’s heavy and glittering and somehow still familiar, and he takes a hold of it and lets himself be pulled up and out of the water straight into the air.

It’s just a short hop to the south-eastern corner of Newfoundland, empty and desolate. As they fly Steve feels his soul aching, the evidence of suffering right in front of him. It’s not just the left arm, it’s also the left wing that’s different, mismatched with the right. And yet, he can see the strength in it, the effortless control in flight.

They settle down and as if by agreement solidify into the shape of their human form. Steve’s overwhelmed, not knowing what to say, where to start. He doesn’t even know what name he should use, because he only knows the one that went with the name he himself left behind a long time ago.

“I hear you go by Steve these days.”

At least they’re going straight to the point, making it easier. Steve breathes, reaching for calm.

“Yes. And what about you?”

“James.”

Steve considers it for a moment, turns the name over his tongue. And maybe it’s stupid, but it’s the only thing that comes to his mind.

“That doesn’t sound like you,” he says and winces right after. He knows how important it can be to shed the old name, to leave everything behind with it and start building from the ground up with a new one.

The reply he gets is completely unexpected and yet achingly familiar; a huff that’s half irritated, half amused, and James says, “I’d forgotten how obnoxious you are.” 

He pulls something out of his pocket and hands it to Steve. It turns out to be a passport, assigned to a James Buchanan Barnes.

“See, James it is,” he says, still clearly amused, and something inside Steve’s soul sings.

Steve considers all of it, the little book in his hand and the man in front of him, and thinks that maybe this is the way forward. 

“You know, James Buchanan is widely considered to be one of the worst presidents in the US history,” he says, and from the quirk of a mouth knows he’s on a more solid ground now. “Maybe I’ll just call you Bucky,” he continues.

“I’m sure I can’t stop you, you’re probably just as stubborn as you always used to be.”

Steve’s eyes involuntarily stray to the left arm that in human form is a metal prosthetic, more advanced than he thinks there should be. Despite the clear signs that James, or to hell with it, Bucky, wants to steer clear from anything serious, Steve can’t help but wonder what happened over the time they were apart.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bucky says, seeing where Steve’s eyes land.

There’s a decision to be made, and Steve is well aware that it’ll set the direction of all that they will be from now on, for all that they could be. 

After a beat he says, “We don’t need to talk.”

 

* * *

 

The sun has set as they stand there on the seashore in wilderness. James looks at Steve, very much the same as he remembers even in his human form, and yet very different too. There is a weight on his shoulders that’s different from the one he used to carry during their war. It was purpose then, but this is just unhappiness, and the years and years stretching behind them.

James suddenly realizes that he’s not the only one that has drastically changed. So far he’s thought it would be Steve that would need to readjust to him if they ever were to try to be friends again, but it goes both ways, he sees it now. His fragmented memories will only serve him so far, and even though it means they both have been through hardship, it might turn out to be easier this way.

James knows that even when what he had to go through was beyond horrible, it could still have been much worse. In the limbo time didn’t exist, and after his captors were done with him it was easy to just float and to shut down. He understands how time passes in this universe, and knows the fourteen billion years it has existed must have felt a lot longer than his captivity did. And even if they are relatively less mutable than people, that much time must have taken its toll on Steve. James can tell it has.

He also knows that Steve is not stupid, never has been, and that he can probably see a lot more about James than he would wish. He stands there, with Steve’s words echoing in his mind, seeing how he could understand them in two ways. That he doesn’t have to explain anything, or that he can explain without saying a word. Both are true, and he thinks that maybe they need to risk it. He can’t find the words to explain what happened to him, but it’s true they have other ways to communicate. Maybe he needs to show what he has become, and in return he’ll see what Steve is now like. It might be the only way they can move forward from this moment without any regrets.

James holds out his hand, deliberately the left, the most visible change, and once again Steve doesn’t hesitate at all to grasp a hold of it. They shift again, less solid and more, in a way, their wings unfurling, the bright golden white around Steve almost blinding James. They rise up, higher and higher, through clouds still colored by the setting sun, out of the atmosphere far enough that the Earth won’t shadow them. The sunlight makes Steve glow all golden, very much as James remembers from the days of their youth.

He pulls Steve forward, and Steve knows what he wants, coming easily into his embrace, resting their foreheads together. Slowly, agonizingly, James lets down the barriers around his mind and feels Steve do the same, feels himself being pulled in and enveloped in Steve’s consciousness. 

He thought it would be painful, if he ever even got to this point, and it is but not in the way he expected. There’s no resistance, no hiding; just honesty, which can cut deeper than any knife. Still, he feels safe.

He knows Steve can see everything that happened after he fell. There’s every instant of pain, every way he was ripped apart. There’s how he put himself back together and came to this world, and Steve must know just as well as James does that he didn’t manage to find all the pieces that were torn from him. And Steve must also see his memories from before, the memories of them, encased and protected, more precious than anything.

In Steve, James sees the years stretching back, the terrible loneliness even with company, the bright spots that only last moments in comparison. He sees the purposelessness, and the grasping for meaning. He sees the guilt born during the last days of the war, and the guilt of making it through, and neither one has lessened over time.

Most of all though, he is surrounded by love, and it hasn’t changed a bit. Steve has carried it in his heart all this time. James feels it shift, settle around everything Steve gets to know about him, and never wavering.

It’s almost too much.

In fact, it’s definitely too much.

They drift down again, and solidify on the same shore James made the decision to let Steve see all of him only minutes earlier. It feels like hours, like years. They’re still leaning on each other, and James feels tears prickling in his eyes.

“Don’t,” Steve says, his voice rough and fierce. “Don’t think I would think any less of you for not coming back the same after that. It wasn’t your fault.”

“And it wasn’t yours either,” James counters. “It was just the war.”

He’s tired all of a sudden, drained by the effort. He also knows what he needs to do.

Steve knows too. “You’re leaving,” he says.

“Yes,” James admits, because there’s no point in being anything but honest now that Steve has seen everything. “I need to, I don’t know. Distance. For now anyway. I don’t know what happens next.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, smiling but sad. “I won’t come after you unless you call me.”

The promise settles warm in James’s chest, and yet he’s also a tiny bit disappointed.

“Thank you. I wish I could say that there’s something in the end of this, but I can’t. I’m sorry”

“Don’t be. Whatever happens, I’m happy that you’re here now.” It’s complete honesty, even more piercing in the human form that makes it easier to lie and hide.

James nods, deliberately not looking at how Steve’s hands curl into fists, as if he needs to hold onto himself to keep from moving.

“It was good to see you,” he says, and then springs off ground, rebuilding the barriers around his mind.


	5. Things That Matter

Steve stays on the Newfoundland shore until the sun peeks over the eastern horizon. It’s a beautiful morning, not a cloud in sight, but he thinks it would feel like a wonderful day even if it was raining sideways.

He’s known ever since the beginning of the war, for fourteen billion years, what falling into the void means. He’s known it isn’t really death even if the person might as well be lost, and that it isn’t oblivion. It is everlasting pain. Even getting left there with no one actively doing any tormenting will still take its toll, fragment one’s mind and wipe out things.

No one else has survived as long as Bucky did, nor has anyone come back like that, seemingly spontaneously. Yet somehow Bucky’s ashamed over the fact he’s not the same as before. Steve feels exasperated about it, because logically Bucky would know what his achievement means. Steve also does understand, because despite all he’s been through, many things are still same about Bucky, and he always was too hard on himself.

Steve comes back to his Brooklyn apartment, and sits down on the floor in a corner. For a while he just stares into the air in front of him and lets himself remember. It doesn’t take long for tears to fall, steady and unstoppable. It seems that once started, it’ll happen easier.

He pulls himself out of it when there’s a knock on the door and a flash of Sam’s presence. Silently he lets Sam know he can let himself in. Sam looks much like he did two days earlier when he suggested Steve should try flying, and it feels wrong somehow, that anything should be the same when Steve feels like his world has been flipped inside out.

Sam settles down to sit next to him, leaning against the wall.

“The foreboding must have been hell of a lot more than I expected,” Sam says. “I felt your distress, it’s leaking all over the place, so I decided to come and see what it’s about.”

“Sorry,” Steve says, automatic.

“Don’t be. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I, well. You said distress? I guess it’s accurate, and at the same time, I’m happier than I have ever been in this universe, you know?”

“No,” Sam says, and Steve appreciates his frankness. “Honestly, no. It doesn’t look like it.”

“He’s here,” Steve just says, and Sam’s eyes widen.

“What, you mean —”

“Bucky. Or he says it’s James but it feels wrong, and he didn’t seem to mind.”

It’s probably the least relevant point Steve could make, and yet right now it’s all he has.

“How do you get Bucky from, wait, never mind. He’s here? How?” Sam sounds incredulous.

“Not sure.” Steve rubs his temples, trying to gather his thoughts. “He doesn’t know either, I could tell when he let me in. But it’s, I’ve been thinking, every day through all these years, what it must be like for him, and it was worse than I could ever imagine, even knowing from previous records. But he’s here.”

“And now you’re happier than you’ve been,” Sam concludes.

“Yeah. I know it sounds terrible and selfish.”

“No. We all know that this right here is much better than it can be on that side. How is he?”

“Honestly, better than anyone has any right to expect. I think Nat has been helping him, and I’m glad he happened upon her. Must help to be able to talk to someone who understands.”

“And now?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know,” Steve admits. “But it’s better than what I knew just two days ago, so. If he decides he’ll never want to see me again, it’s still more than I ever hoped for.”

“Yeah, because you hoped for so many things. How are you, then?”

“I —” Steve starts, but doesn’t get any further before Sam interrupts him.

“And don’t say it doesn’t matter in the scale of things, it does. So tell me really, how are you?”

“Happy, like I said. Devastated. Hurting. Confused? Something like that.”

“Well, that was actually more honest than I expected.” Sam finally smiles. “Anything you want to share? Or do you want to break into that bottle of whiskey you have and pretend we can get dunk?”

“That sounds like an idea.”

***

“Remember, back before the war,” Steve says, when they’re halfway through a second bottle, “how death didn’t feel real?”

He thinks back, on how innocent they had been. There had been a peace that had lasted for eons, their species had easily spread across galaxies, and there had been virtually no worries.

“Yeah, I remember. It’s so different here. They’re so much more fragile than us,” Sam says.

“True,” Steve agrees. “But sometimes I think it makes them reach higher. We had, and again have, all the time in the world. Nothing more suitable for procrastination.”

“You’re probably right. So what about it?”

“Back during the war, I still thought we could go back to it. That we could just fix it and continue from where we left off. I knew it would be difficult, but I always believed it. Then he fell, and I knew nothing would be the same even if we won.”

“We did win,” Sam points out, looking sad.

“Doesn’t feel like we did.”

“No, it really doesn’t.”

“Now, he’s back,” Steve continues, “and I just don’t know what it means. There are things that mattered before, but I don’t know if they do anymore.”

“Hey, it’s okay to be confused. Hell, I’m confused,” Sam says and refills their glasses, and not with single shots either, they’re more like quadruple shots.

“I am confused.” Steve swallows his whiskey down with one go. “Sometimes I look at them, the people here, and it feels like I’m not doing anything. Time just passes and I’m here, nothing I do changes that.”

Sam looks at him for a while, and says, “Seventy years ago you fought in the war and inspired, not only your team but a whole nation of soldiers. And three nights ago you walked on the streets, bringing food to homeless. Believe me, it mattered to them. What you do can be important, even if it’s important to just one person. And that person can be yourself. So it matters, even if you feel like you’re not going anywhere.”

Steve is quiet for a second. “I wish you’d known Bucky, before. He’d have liked you, you’re the kind of sensible person he appreciated.”

“Maybe I will. After all, now there is a chance,” Sam says, and Steve directs a grateful smile at him. “And I’m not surprised, I figured any lasting friend of yours would have to be of the more grounded sort.”

Sam elbows him, and Steve feels lighter. He doesn’t yet dare to allow himself believe, but maybe. Just maybe things can be alright again, some day.

 

* * *

 

It annoys but doesn’t really surprise him that he automatically starts thinking of himself in his head as Bucky. After all, ever since they were young Steve could influence him like that. He was always willing to go along, even if it often was only to make sure Steve didn’t get himself into trouble.

He spends the next few days inside his apartment, indecisive on what he should do. He’s shored his barriers up tight, not giving out anything of himself. In contrast, the one time he tries it, he can reach Steve with no effort at all. Clearly Steve has stopped hiding himself as carefully as he did before their encounter.

It’s not much, just a whisper at the edge of his consciousness if he doesn’t actively search for it, but for him it’s clear as day it’s Steve’s presence off somewhere to west, and he finds it reassuring. Part of him doesn’t like the feeling at all, as if he’s taking something from Steve when he doesn’t know where they will end up yet. He also knows there’s really nothing he can do about it, this is Steve’s choice.

On the fourth day Natalia appears at his place. She’s never been there before, usually it’s Bucky who goes to her. She takes one look at him, and he is again reminded of how much she can see even with just human eyes. Steve could see him like that too, could before and apparently still can, and it feels somehow different, even if it’s always uncomfortable to a degree. With Steve, Bucky found himself wanting to open up, even though he knew it would hurt. Under Natalia’s gaze he instinctively draws everything closer.

“You met him,” she states, not looking particularly surprised. “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know,” he tells her, the only truth he has. “He didn’t react like I thought he might.”

Her mouth quirks into a smile. “Now you know he’s not the same he used to be either. I’m guessing you’re surprised he didn’t expect things from you.”

“You’re right, he didn’t,” Bucky says, and it occurs to him then that she’s known all along that he’d expect that, and that she’s also known it wouldn’t be the truth.

“You know him better than you’ve let on so far,” he hedges.

“Yeah, I know him. And I care about him. Sometimes when I’m with him, I want to be more myself, more than what they tried to make me. And sometimes it’s difficult.”

“Feels like being in his presence is blinding you,” Bucky agrees. “It was like that already before the war.”

She hands him a coffee she brought and takes a sip out of her own.

Bucky lets the warmth seep into him, from the middle of his sternum to his fingertips, and considers the new information.

“He decided I don’t look like James, and called me Bucky.”

“That sounds like him. I think I’ll stick to James, though. Bucky sounds like the kind of name that only people that have known you forever should use.”

“He’s an asshole, is what it is,” Bucky says, and finds himself smiling.

They’re quiet for a while.

“What do you want now?” she asks. “Don’t think about it, just say the first thing that comes to mind.”

“I don’t want to go back into the void,” he says immediately, and only belatedly thinks it’s probably funny that his want centers on something he doesn’t want.

“Okay,” she says, just accepting it. “So build on that. Focus on one thing, and others come after.”

“That’s pretty zen, doesn’t sound like something Clint would say,” Bucky observes and she laughs.

“No, it was Bruce, actually.”

“Bruce?” Bucky inquires, and Natalia gives him a flurry of images, change and transformation, anger.

“He’s somewhat excitable company, but he’s got good ideas,” she says.

***

After Bucky says goodbye to her, he goes up to his balcony and stands there for a moment. It’s the clearest thing in his mind, the certainty of never wanting to go back. He’d rather fully burn. Because of it, he needs to make sure that it can never happen again, and a good place for starting it is to go back to where he first appeared into this world. Back then he was a shadow of someone, confused and mixed up, and he certainly wasn’t fully capable of thinking about why and how he came here. Now is the time to find out.

When he was on the way toward west, he walked. Now he shifts and gets up in the air. The presence of Steve, third of the globe away, flares up in his mind before he pushes it to background again, and sets out toward east, toward the rising sun.

He appeared on the planet during winter, and now it’s mid-summer, so the Siberian wasteland looks completely different. The gnarly and short trees are green instead of it all being covered with snow, the short relatively warmer season in full swing. He flies over it until he finds the place where he appeared, among the stepped hills and mountains. There are no specific landmarks, but it stands out inside his mind.

He stands there, exactly where he solidified for the first time, and looks around him. At first he senses nothing. He opens his mind fully, does the sweep again, and sees it, small and almost negligible, but it makes his heart run cold.


	6. Trust

The days pass and Steve falls back into a routine. He volunteers at the shelters, helps the homeless on the street, spends time with Sam and Carol and sometimes even Tony, even if he doesn’t really feel comfortable at the Tower. 

It’s been a couple of weeks since he saw Bucky, and Steve hasn’t really sensed anything from him. There was a flicker, on the second day after their parting, but it was gone so fast he’s almost inclined to think he imagined it, hope mixing up the reality. He’s seen it happen often enough. He’s left himself a bit more open than usual, since he wants to be welcoming if Bucky wants to reach him, and it has taken a while to adjust to his new perception of the world, with the human senses of his flesh and blood body same as they always have been, but the more heightened ones of his own dialed up. It felt like seeing double at first, but it’s worth it.

One night there is electricity crackling in the air, and the ink dark clouds roll in from the horizon as the night is falling, making it even darker than usual. Not that there is much difference in the city, with all the lights. 

Steve considers the oncoming storm, searches the familiar presence, and leaves his apartment, heading toward Manhattan. The first drops of rain are falling as he gets out of the Grand Central Station and crosses over to the entrance of Stark Tower. Tony is just exiting the building, on his way for a late dinner meeting based on his clothes, and Steve just nods at him.

“He’s on the roof,” Tony says, as if Steve needs telling.

He finds Thor up on the helipad, standing there like a statue, the first lightning bolts streaking the sky. Steve thinks it’s curious how their presence has influenced stories and how they have taken off into surprising directions. Thor’s presence seems to be in all kinds of tales, even those that don’t refer to any of the rest of them. There’s always Thunder, in every mythology. Steve still doesn’t know why Thor decided to take up the name from the Norse myths.

They nod to each other in greeting, but leave it at that, and Steve appreciates it. This night, he doesn’t want to talk. He’s always enjoyed being in Thor’s company during thunderstorms. It’s a curious kind of peace he finds then, because the weather is so loud that he can fully focus on it instead of whatever is going on inside his mind.

Now too he’s able to stand there, feeling the presence of his friend next to him steady like an anchor. Right then he doesn’t feel like falling, not as much as usual.

These days Steve always feels like he’s falling; as if the plunge he took into the ocean never stopped. It’s the uncertainty, he knows it, the not knowing what might happen. He’s falling, and he doesn’t know what the landing will be like. Will it be soft and steady, coming down on his feet, or will he crash into the ground? And yet, he’d rather have this uncertainty than the steady existence he had before he sensed Bucky. It’s no contest, really.

So he feels like he’s falling, and it’s appropriate because everything seems to be about falling. Either watching Bucky fall, unable to stop it, or falling himself, into this new world. Later he was falling inside the plane at the end of the war seven decades earlier, knowing what he could and couldn’t do, or into the ocean with the shock just days ago. 

There’s always falling, starting from back home, on the perfect day he looked at Bucky and suddenly everything was new and different, even if he’d spent every day of his life with Bucky before that.

He’s been falling ever since.

***

Steve spends the night with Thor on the roof, all through the storm and subsequent clearing of the sky. There are the millions and millions of stars they can see despite the light pollution, and it strikes Steve again how beautiful this universe where they all got stranded is. Sometimes it’s hard to remember it, especially when all he seems to think about is loss.

But maybe, just maybe, he’ll be able to move forward with at least some part of that loss repaired.

Steve walks home at the early hours of morning, when the traffic is at the minimum and there are only a few random people here and there. There’s an all night diner where he gets about ten sandwiches to go, and hands them out to people as he goes.

The sun is rising as he’s crossing the Brooklyn bridge, the morning sky shining in a way that only happens after storm, everything scrubbed clean. It’s beautiful, and Steve lets himself enjoy it, lets himself sink into it so well that he only realizes the proximity that’s been growing in his mind when he can actually see the speck in the sky.

He stops to draw a breath, looking at the approaching form he knows no one else can see, and tries to gather the calm of the morning inside him, tries to fortify himself for whatever it is to come.

 

* * *

 

Bucky finds Steve standing in the middle of a bridge, looking like he belongs in the city in a way Bucky has never quite managed yet. He wonders if it’s just how it looks and not the truth, but doesn’t dwell on it. There are more pressing matters.

He drops onto his feet in front of Steve, and doesn’t even greet him before getting right into business.

“I need your help,” he says and Steve’s expression goes from a smile to furrowed brow.

“Yeah, of course, Bucky are you okay?”

“It’s, well. Can you just come with me? It’ll be easier to explain when you see it,” Bucky says and adds, “You’re the only one I trust.”

Steve’s face does something complicated, Bucky’s not sure what it means since he’s staying out of Steve’s mind. Steve shifts, his wings unfurling, and nods.

“Lead the way,” Steve says, and they spring into air.

As they go, it occurs to Bucky how odd it is that he’s the one telling where they’re going. For as long as he can remember Steve was the one leading the way and he followed. It doesn’t take them long at all to arrive above Siberia.

“Have you been here before?” Bucky asks, suddenly curious.

“Yeah,” Steve says and then laughs without amusement. “I’ve been everywhere on this planet, including the bottom of the ocean.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t the first time you floated around with the fish couple of weeks ago?” Bucky says, and finds a little humor in it, the kind of banter that settles right inside him, as if coming to an often visited place.

“No, it wasn’t. There was a long time when all life except for our kind was in the oceans, so it was much more interesting down there.”

They settle down, near where Bucky first appeared, and Steve looks around.

“About two hundred and fifty million years ago this whole area, hundreds of miles into every direction, was covered by volcanoes erupting continuously for about a million years. It nearly killed all life on Earth.”

Bucky huffs a laugh, because it feels strangely appropriate.

“This is where I appeared, last winter,” he says. “Back then I didn’t wonder how it happened, I couldn’t, but started a few days ago. So I had to come and see.”

“Because you want to make sure the way is closed,” Steve guesses, looking around them, clearly assessing.

“Except, it isn’t,” Bucky says, but it’s a bit of a moot point, since Steve is already moving toward the rift.

It’s small, almost undetectable, a tear in the fabric of universe. Steve moves closer than Bucky has so far dared, and reaches his hand out. Bucky mentally steps on the desire to tell him not to, to be careful not to be pulled in. Steve backs away half a step, visibly uneasy, and looks at Bucky.

“What do you want to do?”

“We have to close it,” Bucky says, more sure than he’s been of anything yet. “I know we can do it. It’s small and we’ve done something like it before. Besides, you know this side well, and I know the other side.”

“Right, we can build a barrier together,” Steve agrees, and extends his hand to Bucky.

Bucky grasps it with his right and they step in front of the rift, raise their free hands to both sides of it and open their minds to each other. As soon as the barriers come down Bucky can feel the void pressing, threatening. It’s easier for him, he thinks, at least it’s familiar. Steve trembles next to him and then pressed his lips together and rolls his shoulders. They could do it without lowering the barrier, but it’s faster like this, their senses more keen, and coordination among the two of them seamless.

They nod at each other and start pushing, forcing the rift closed. The void presses against them, resists their efforts to push it back. They keep to it, even if Bucky feels sick, and can feel the same echoes in Steve too. They don’t give up, and atom by atom they manage to patch the tear back up. Finally, exhausted, they run their hands over it, making sure there are no weak spots and find none. 

Only then they let go, and Bucky leans on his knees and suddenly realizes he’s back in his human form when he’s retching. Steve clearly isn’t feeling any better, and they stumble a little distance away, falling to the ground. Steve pulls Bucky in his arms and they curl up and fall asleep in seconds.

The sun is up as high as it ever gets when Bucky wakes up, his head resting on Steve’s chest, feeling a bit more together, and most important of all, safer than he has in ages. At least that avenue is closed, he thinks as he sits up and glances at the empty air where the rift used to be.

Steve stirs too, and suddenly Bucky doesn’t know what to say. He’s still not ready to face all that’s between them, and maybe it was unfair to ask Steve’s help if he’s not ready for anything else.

“Stop thinking,” Steve says, looking at him his face apprehensive, and it’s clear what he means. Steve doesn’t regret it at all.

“We should probably head back,” Bucky says, and Steve nods, understanding, and shifts again ready to fly.

“You know where to find me,” Steve says.

“I know,” Bucky agrees, and then watches as Steve springs into the air and soon disappears beyond the curve of the Earth.


	7. The Fault of the Fallen

Now that Steve is leaving himself more open to Bucky, he’s also more conscious about everything else, and in the coming days there is a realization that slowly works its way into his mind. There is a life, one he cared about decades ago and still does, that’s nearing its end. 

He dithers about what he wants to do for a few days, thinks of whether it would be unfair and selfish to go now, after pretending to die, after never explaining. Maybe it is selfish, he can’t really tell, but he has to go.

It’s a short hop to England, and he lands outside a hospital and then walks into the ward where Peggy is taken care of. No one pays attention to him as he walks through the corridors since he doesn’t want them to, and soon he’s at her door. He slips inside, and moves to stand in a corner a little out of the way. It’s getting darker outside.

Peggy is lying on the bed asleep; white haired, frail and almost translucent, the last edges of her life lingering. It’s a stark difference to when Steve last saw her. During the war she was all about determination, bursting with vibrancy. It’s hard to look at her like this, but Steve feels like he owes her.

There’s a young woman sitting next to Peggy, holding her hand and reading a book. They don’t look too much alike to Steve, but there’s something similar about them, maybe the decisive way she carries herself is familiar.

Steve waits as darkness deepens outside the window, and finally the young woman puts her book away, kisses Peggy on the forehead and says, “Good night, Aunt.”

She leaves after looking back from the door, hesitating, and Steve doesn’t need to see her thoughts to know she too knows that every time she visits and leaves could be the last goodbye. After she’s gone Steve waits a while longer, until a nurse comes in, makes sure Peggy is comfortable and lowers the lights.

As the sounds from the corridor quiet down Steve steps forward and sits down into the chair next to Peggy. He takes her hand and after hesitating for a minute, nudges at her mind a little, gives her some clarity. He still doesn’t know if he wants to do this, but he knew her well, and he thinks she would like to know the truth.

She deserves the truth.

Peggy blinks her eyes open, and Steve is taken aback a little, because they are just the same, and yet changed. There’s new depth in them now, brought by age, but Steve can still see a hint of the familiar sparkle. 

“Steve?” she ask, disbelieving for a second, and then understanding, if faulty, comes. “So, I’ve passed to the other side finally. I’m happy to see you.” She smiles the brightest he’s ever seen.

“No, Peggy, not yet,” Steve tells her, fighting to keep her voice steady. “We’re still here in the same world where we met.”

“Then how?” she asks, and with the clarity he helped her regain, she’s still sharp as ever, adjusting to the new information.

“I didn’t die on the plane, obviously. I had to leave, so I made you all believe I had.”

Steve can tell there are several questions that fight to come out, and waits to see which one she chooses to ask first.

“What are you?”

She goes straight to the point, but it doesn’t come out the way that particular question usually does, scared or judgmental. She’s curious. There’s also a hint of anger in her, which Steve knows he deserves.

“Here, look for yourself.”

Steve squeezes her hand and lets her see him in his true form. She stares for a while, blinks and swallows, clearly trying to decide whether he’s a hallucination after all. Steve lets go so he’s again just as she always knew him.

“So you’re,” she starts slowly, thoughtful, “an angel? Like in the bible.”

“Well, not quite. Your stories of angels, be they scripture or literature, stem from us, but they’re not accurate. None of them is quite correct.”

“Then what is the truth? And what do you mean by us? There are more of you?”

“A handful. I’m not the only one you know, either. Stark is one too.”

“You mean Howard or Tony?”

“I mean both. Same guy.”

She thinks on it for a second. “Well, that certainly explains why Tony sometimes refers to me the same way Howard used to. I figured he’d just picked it up, but. Well. Go on.”

“We come from a different world, one that was ripped to shreds by a war, and most of our kind died then. Some of us ended up here, refugees stranded in a newborn universe. And some of us were taken and dragged into darkness. It’s not so different from the wars here.”

“Guess not. Why’d you choose to fight in the war here?”

“Because it was one that needed to be fought, and won. We are nearly indestructible by your standards, but we can’t really do that much more than people. But the program with the serum gave me the plausible reason to be just a bit stronger and faster than I should have been.”

“So, when we thought the freak success with you was something to do with you specifically, it was just that, but not for the reasons we considered,” Peggy says.

“Right.”

“What about the rest of it?”

Steve sighs. “I’m sorry Peggy. All I intended to do was to fight, and I never expected there to be something like what happened between us. And in the end, I had to leave.”

“But it was real,” she asks, and now Steve sees the new doubt that’s been growing in her mind with her new knowledge of the truth.

“Yes, Peggy. It was real.” He takes a hold of her hands again. “I truly loved you then, still do, but I couldn’t stay.”

She squeezes his hands too. “That’s good. It would have been a nasty surprise to have something that fundamental be a lie, even on my last hours on this Earth when I don’t have the energy to care about too many things. I’m still angry you didn’t tell me before, but I understand. After all, I’ve spent most of my life guarding secrets,” she concedes. “Guess it wouldn’t have worked, with our different lifespans.”

“It wasn’t a lie, what we felt,” Steve reassures her, and knows that now that he’s started, he’ll have to tell her all of it. “It surprised me back then and I needed to figure out how I wanted it to go. You see, the different lifespans aren’t an insurmountable problem. If I’d chosen, I could have changed, could have truly become a human. Some of my kind have done it. But at the same time, I couldn’t. And I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s been a long time, too long to hold a grudge. I’m happy to see you, and glad to know the truth.” She pauses. “Can you tell me why you couldn’t? I’m sensing a story.”

Steve is quiet for a moment, thinking of how to start. 

“I told you how the stories about angels are sort of accurate. It’s because that’s how myths work, they start from somewhere, and then they change shape to make sense to the people telling stories. Some details come close, for example our names are familiar, which is one of the reasons why we usually go by different ones. Anyway, you have stories about the war in the heaven, right? How some angels were unsatisfied and fell, were cast out. It’s not quite accurate though. Some left, chose it. And others were taken. They fell and burned.”

Steve draws breath, steadying himself, and Peggy squeezes his hands again.

“Here in the stories the fall became the fault of the fallen,” Steve says, because it’s the only way he can explain.

It doesn’t really make sense he thinks, but Peggy understands anyway. “You lost someone. Someone you loved.”

“Yes. I couldn’t catch him. I still see him falling in my dreams.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, and then Peggy says, “I always thought there was some kind of deep sadness in you, and I didn’t want to ask because it didn’t feel like it was my place.” She looks at him, the way she has that feels like she can see much deeper in him than he’d want to. “Now you don’t look as sad anymore.”

Steve smiles. “Guess I don’t. You see, he came here, somehow. Sometimes people were able to escape the void, but I thought I would be impossible now, after such a long time, now that our own world is gone.”

Her eyes soften. “I’m glad. And now you also know you made the right choice. I think you would have regretted it, if you’d chosen to be a human with me, and because of that I’m glad you didn’t. I wouldn’t want that, for either of us.”

“Me neither. And I know you’ve done wonderful things in your life, Peggy. But more than that, I hope you’ve been happy.”

“I have, and I am.”

She closes her eyes for a while, but Steve knows she’s not drifting yet, and so he waits.

“Why do you think he came back?” she asks a moment later.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “He doesn’t either. We know how, but not why it happened. The only thing I can think of, something my mother used to say, is that the universe knows how to correct itself after we tear it apart. She didn’t mean it quite as literally as I’m interpreting it here, but still. I’ve no other explanation.”

“Do you know what happens after death?” she asks then, jumping to another topic.

“No,” he says, gentle. “That’s beyond my senses. In that I’m the same as you, all I can do is hope and believe.”

Now she’s getting tired again, and Steve knows he’ll have to let her go soon.

“You said the stories get your names often right,” she says after a pause. “Do they get your name right?”

Steve smiles, and thinks that this is the final gift he can give her, so he leans in and whispers in her ear. She blinks and laughs, sudden and brilliant, same as always, and for a moment she’s glowing with life.

“The perfect soldier, should have known.”

She finally falls asleep, and Steve stays with her, feeling her consciousness slip further and further away. Finally she draws a breath, lets it out and never draws another. She isn’t connected to any machines to monitor her state, as she’s been waiting for a natural death, and Steve sits with her, feeling her skin cool down until there are steps in the corridor, the night nurse making rounds. 

He slips away as the nurse comes in, because there’s nothing he can do for her anymore.

 

* * *

 

Bucky goes back to his apartment in Saint Petersburg, and deliberately makes an attempt to fall back into the life he had before Steve became aware of him for the first time and he couldn’t anymore ignore the fact they’d somehow both ended up at this same world. He takes walks, visits Natalia, they go out together, and it’s honestly good.

He knows full well that the person he was before the void wouldn’t have been able to comprehend wanting to be away from Steve, but he’s not what he used to be. He’s been ripped apart and filled with the void and even if he somehow has managed to pull himself together again, there’s no way to erase what he’s been through, and it colors everything else.

It’s not even that he doesn’t want to be with Steve, because he does. What he wants is for it to be easy, like it used to be, and it’s not, probably not for either of them. That’s what hurts; that somehow they’ve drifted apart, even when it still feels like they’re being pulled together by something like gravity.

It hurts too to remember that he used to be able to tell what Steve was thinking just by looking at him, whether they were connected in their minds or not. He used to know, and now he doesn’t. He also doesn’t know whether it’s because he has changed, that he just doesn’t remember, or because Steve has changed, that his experiences over the billions of years spent in this universe have shaped him so that he’s no longer in sync with Bucky.

Maybe it’s both.

It all stacks up and makes it difficult to be with Steve. Difficult enough that Bucky has made the decision to stay away for now. He thinks he’d manage it for longer if he’d try, but he knows it would just rip Steve apart to see how he’d have to struggle, and he doesn’t want that. He’s not quite sure about how Steve feels about him leaving. So far at least Steve has projected calm understanding, and it’s what Bucky feels when he lets his mind catch a hint of Steve’s presence. It probably hasn’t been long enough yet; if the avoidance continues Steve might start feeling differently.

It’s a tangle of wanting and not, knowing and not, and Bucky feels like he’s in a whole another kind of limbo with his existence. 

***

Being with Natalia is easy, almost as easy as it used to be with Steve back before the war. With her there are no previous expectations, since they didn’t really know each other before they met here, and Bucky rarely has to explain anything, since their experiences are comparable enough. He never fears she’ll judge him for what he has become, and it makes it easy to relax and to just not think about the past. With her, he knows exactly where he is and what their relationship is.

With her, he can have company and live in the present without the intrusion of memories.

He’d be happy here with her, he thinks, despite all, if he’d landed on this world with her and Steve wasn’t here. A part of his mind rebels at the idea, because it would mean Steve would be gone, but he’s honest enough to himself to know it’s true. After all, he gave Steve up once already, and having made it to safety he’d be able to move on.

Only now he can’t, and a part of him resents it. The rest of him is just sad. He doesn’t resent Steve or his presence though, he never could. It’s just the circumstance that makes it all too complicated.

There’s also a thought that’s been forming in his head, a worry that there’s a significant part of Steve that doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be at all, even if he has lasted for billions of years. The thought, the wrongness about it, makes Bucky feel cold all over.

Because even if it’s hard, even if he sometimes wishes that he didn’t have to go through this, since Steve is here, Bucky would never want him gone.

All he can do is live with the complications and hope that it’ll be easier someday, that someday he’ll have answers. Hence he tries to live like he used to, spends time with Natalia, and tries not to think of it. It’s almost the same as it used to be. Almost, but not exactly.

One evening a few days after he comes back from repairing the rift, she runs her hand up his thigh, and he takes a hold of it and moves it away.

“I can’t,” he says, apologetic. “I don’t even know why, I just can’t.”

She just looks at him, not angry or disappointed, just accepting that it’s different now, and he’s grateful for her, for about a thousandth time since she found him.

“I think you know why,” she just points out, and takes a sip of her tea.

“It’s, I mean what we do, it’s never been anything more than sex, I don’t know why I suddenly can’t. It’s not like Steve and I are tied like we were before.”

“I know. I just think you’ve remembered that you chose once to give your whole soul away, and it matters, despite everything.”

“Yeah, I have remembered that all the while,” Bucky says, slightly irritated. “It’s the only thing I’ve always remembered.”

“But remembering and truly knowing is different, isn’t it, and I think it only became real again after you saw him.”

Bucky sighs, because she’s right. It’s exactly the same reason why it would be so much easier without Steve.

“I just don’t know what to do,” he admits.

“It’s okay. It’ll come.”

She pats him on the knee, and he’s starting to appreciate the expressiveness of the human body, how touching someone on the leg can mean such vastly different things.

***

Bucky wakes up to a flood of sadness, and at first he’s confused until he realizes it’s not him, it comes from Steve instead. Right after the realization the presence in his mind disappears, and he knows Steve must have raised the barriers around his mind, maybe to not let anyone see.

Bucky wonders what could cause it, and he’s a little bit afraid too for Steve, so he breathes out and expands his mind, looking for Steve. He’s closer than Bucky expected, in England for some reason, and he’s sad, but it doesn’t feel like it would cause Steve to do something reckless. Bucky considers nudging his mind, asking what’s wrong, but he doesn’t, just pulls away, because he gets a feeling Steve wants to be left alone.

He doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.


	8. Still Here

Steve has been in quite a few funerals during his time in this world, in all different kinds of them, from when people were buried in red dirt with their tools made of bone and stone, to the lavish affairs where viking kings were sent out to the ocean in a burning ship. Some of the honored he knew, some he didn’t, some had been born human, others were his kind that had chosen to become human beings. Had chosen to have their life end.

Sometimes Steve wonders if it can be considered a suicide to choose a life as a mortal.

Sometimes he wonders how his kind should be classified. They are immortal in a sense, the way the elves in the book with the ring are. They will live, forever if nothing drastic happens, but they can be killed. They can lose their will to live, and cease to exist.

He disagrees with the common saying among the humans, that death gives life its meaning. It isn’t so. The people that live have to give life its meaning by themselves, there’s no other way it works. He also thinks it might be easier to do with the constant knowledge that sooner or later time will run out, so the looming death can be an incentive, but not the ultimate reason.

Back in his own world, Steve hadn’t really spared a thought to death, not until the war anyway. There had been no end in sight, but he still thinks that he lived to the fullest where it really mattered. He loved Bucky, and he fought for his world, even if it was doomed from the start. And now, maybe, just maybe, he’ll have a chance to have one of those things back. 

He also knows he might not, and the thought aches in him, the idea that they will live in this same world with Bucky but not be together. Still, that ache is infinitely better than the numbness he’s carried in his soul for nearly fourteen billion years.

The concept of a funeral is something he had to learn here, on this world, Steve thinks as he sits at the back of the church, letting his eyes rest on the photo of Peggy as she used to be decades earlier. His kind leave nothing behind when they die, is the thing. When their life ends, they just become stardust without gravity holding it together, consciousness shattering into pieces. Maybe they have something that stays, a soul that passes to some other kind of reality, but he’s no wiser than humans on that. In their own universe the dead were remembered, but there was no official occasion.

Unsurprisingly Peggy’s funeral is the most difficult one he’s attended. There hasn’t been anyone else on this world he’s loved as much, no other death that has touched him the way hers has. The blond woman he saw in Peggy’s room, Sharon, gets up to talk about her aunt, about her courage and perseverance. It’s a fitting eulogy, and later there’s music. It’s hard to comprehend Peggy’s gone, hard to let go even if he already did so seven decades earlier.

Steve hangs back at the graveyard as her coffin is lowered to the ground, as the flowers are laid over it, until the black clad crowd starts thinning out. No one pays him any attention, because he doesn’t want them to. Really doesn’t want to answer the questions that would arise.

Well, almost no one pays attention to him. The trick doesn’t really work on their kind.

Tony of course came, since Peggy, as far as she knew for almost all her life, knew both Howard and Tony. Steve doesn’t even want to think of the logistics of that. After the ceremony, when everyone else is gone, Tony comes to stand next to him.

“She had a good life,” Tony says, and Steve thinks there’s some attempt of reassurance in his voice.

“I know. She told me,” Steve says, and as Tony glances at him, continues, “I was there on her last night, talked with her. I told her.”

Tony nods. “If anyone, she deserved the truth.”

They’re quiet for a while, just standing there, remembering her. They exchange bits of her life with each other, the parts the other doesn’t know but will appreciate. Images flash in Steve’s mind, of her after he went down in the plane and left, of her moving on with her life, and making more with it than anyone should be expected to.

“Do you ever regret it?” Tony finally asks. “Leaving her?”

Steve thinks for a moment, on whether he wants Tony to know.

“I think, had I chosen her, had I become a human to live with her, I would have regretted it in the end,” he says. “And I also regret not getting to live with her. So, this is what it is.”

Tony leaves then, and Steve takes a walk around the city. He comes back to the graveyard later in the night, and finds her grave filled over, covered with turf. He lays down the roses he brought with him, and says his goodbyes.

 

* * *

 

During the months Bucky’s spent in this world, he’s started to grasp the different natures of cities; the strange kind of personality of a place that happens when a group of humans choose to stay together in a particular site. The little glimpse he got of New York was different from his sense of Saint Petersburg, and London is yet again different. 

He finds Steve standing in a graveyard, at a foot of a newly filled grave. There are deep red roses laid over the turf, and the stone says  _ Margaret Carter.  _ Steve doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even look at him when Bucky stops next to him. Bucky stands there, and the realization comes to him, undeniable.

“You loved her,” he says, and is maybe half surprised it doesn’t sting.

“I thought about becoming human for her,” Steve admits, and it’s really something Bucky didn’t expect. “I told her, just before she died, the truth.”

The discussion is nothing Bucky expected when coming here, but he presses on. “How’d you meet her?”

“In the war,” Steve says, and then laughs, humorless and self-deprecating. “There always seems to be a war. In the end, I decided I couldn’t stay, so I had to make her believe I’d died. I flew a plane into the Arctic Ocean.”

Bucky gapes at him. “You fell from the sky? Really?”

“Yeah, really,” Steve says, and Bucky can tell Steve knows exactly what he’s thinking, even when he’s keeping the barriers up.

“This is a hell of a mess,” he says, and Steve finally looks at him.

“It’s been a mess for a long time,” he agrees.

Bucky’s not sure what he should say, so he goes with the first thing that pops into his head. Not always the best plan, he’s fully aware.

“It would have been awkward though, had you had to talk about your exes. But I guess she wouldn’t have felt too threatened by someone that’s been dead for fourteen billion years.”

Steve gapes at him, aghast. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“If I can’t joke about it, then who?” Bucky asks, and Steve stares at him, but seems to get it in the end, shaking his head.

Steve turns back to look at the grave. “You know, if I was standing here, only after having decided to become human and living a life with her. If I was standing here and knew what I know now, I’d regret it.”

It’s a confession, and Bucky knows what it means, knows exactly what it means even after the billions of years. Since coming back he’s been in Steve’s head and Steve has been in his. They’ve shared their minds and with it everything they are, and yet this simple statement is really what makes it real for Bucky. Makes him believe Steve really wants him, still.

The knowledge doesn’t make anything easier.

Steve has now turned toward him, his full attention on Bucky, and he suddenly has an idea. It might be a selfish idea, one that could be leading Steve on, but he still voices it.

 

* * *

 

“Let’s just be humans for a while,” Bucky says, and Steve can’t quite puzzle out what he means.

Steve’s mind jumps immediately to what he’s been thinking, about his choice to not make a life with Peggy, and now for Bucky to suggest it, out of the blue, makes no sense. Then the end of it registers,  _ for a while,  _ and Steve is at sea.

“I mean,” Bucky continues, “can we just try for a while to not carry all our history with us, just be Steve and Bucky, two guys. Get to know each other in these skins. Go to a pub or I don’t know. Just leave it all behind for a while.”

Steve gets the desire to leave everything behind, he’s tried to do it countless of times without ever fully succeeding. Not that he thinks they will succeed now, it would be impossible to not let it matter ever again, but maybe they can ignore it for a while. The idea attracts him, more than he can tell, because unlike every other time, he won’t be alone. And the proposal means that even if Bucky doesn’t want to think about past, it doesn’t mean he wants to shut Steve out.

Steve can work with that. In fact, it’s more than he dared to hope for just the day before.

They head out of the graveyard and walk along the streets, just aimlessly wandering. It’s late, but there’s still quite a bit of traffic around. They point out things that catch their eye, Steve tells Bucky about London and its history, Bucky talks about how it feels like a different sort of a city from any other he’s been to. Steve finds himself wanting to visit Saint Petersburg again. The last time he was there the last Emperor had held reign, and they’d been celebrating the birth of a princess in the city. He knows too, that it’s too early for that. It’s probably good that they’re in London, a city that’s not either of their home.

They walk all night, into the quiet hours of the morning, climb over the fence circling the Hyde Park and sit by the Serpentine as the sky begins to lighten.

“Where do you want to go next?” Steve asks.

“I don’t know, not specifically. Somewhere nice? Natalia says we might as well enjoy our stay in here, take advantage of being alive.”

“I know. She’s been telling me to do that for about six thousand years now. I’ve been generally bad at taking that advice,” Steve confesses, and Bucky actually laughs.

“High time you did it then,” Bucky says, and Steve doesn’t want to say no. “Come on, let’s find something.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Steve says, pulling out his phone. “Tony owes me a few favors, and he’ll certainly know where to go.”

Steve’s phone is like any other, even if it technically works more by persuasion rather than technology, same as with all their phones. They’ve found that texting and calling are more practical than basically yelling at each other from across the world. They can do it, but it gets exhausting.

His phone chirps and Steve laughs as he reads the address, because he should have guessed.

Steve has heard of the Savoy, but has never been inside, and he wonders what they think about them there, turning up on foot and with no luggage. Not that he much cares. There is a distinctly noticeable change in the mood when Steve mentions Tony’s name. They’re immediately whisked into a beautiful and frankly opulent suite with a view over the river.

“That’s more like it,” Bucky says as soon as they’re alone. “I’m taking a bath.”

They end up staying in the suite for the next few days, dressed in the fluffy bathrobes, eating and drinking, watching television and commenting on the bizarreness of it, sitting at the window and looking at the traffic on the river.

It’s easy, and Steve lets himself be immersed in it, lets himself forget he’s anything but Steve, lets himself forget their loaded history. The only thing that matters is they’re together. Bucky too looks more relaxed than Steve has yet seen him, smiling and laughing, and Steve would give up a lot if they could just keep this ease about them.

As the days slowly move on, Steve begins to understand the reasons why Bucky so far has wanted to leave, has wanted to stay away. It’s like a weight is lifted off his soul, because now he knows it’s not that Bucky doesn’t want to be with him, it’s all their history and the weight of it, the complications and expectations. With that Steve starts thinking of everything he can do to make it easier, to make Bucky see that for Steve at least it doesn’t matter they’ve both changed. He tucks them into the back of his mind, for later.

In the meantime Steve just enjoys having Bucky in his space.

 

* * *

 

So far Bucky has thought that he’s changed too much, that Steve’s changed too much for him to know what’s on Steve’s mind without reading him, without being let in, but he finds that it’s not really true. Here in the opulent hotel suite, constantly being near Steve, the barriers around their minds up firm to prevent anything from leaking, he watches Steve, and he sees.

They’re together nearly every second of the day, barring bathroom and showering, everything else they do with each other. Bucky thinks it’s a bit funny they keep that line between them, since the two of them have been, both here and before, closer to each other than any two human beings ever could be. But it’s a line, and they stick to it. For now anyway. Bucky knows it would crumble at the slightest push. They talk and laugh and eat together. They sleep together, curled in the same bed, facing each other but only touching by accident, never by choice.

Bucky keeps looking at Steve, easy and open, as if he’s looking just for the sake of it, but his mind keeps track of things, keeps making lists of things Steve does, things he doesn’t do, and making connections, searching for meaning. He looks, and he understands.

Steve is tense at first, uncertain. It’s not obvious or overt, but Bucky can tell it’s always there, at the back of his mind. A thought, a fear. The days pass, and he watches it dissipate, sees Steve’s shoulders lose the final bit of tension, sees how it’s easier for him to look away because he doesn’t expect Bucky to be gone the next moment.

He should probably feel bad about that, because he knows this can’t last, knows he’ll have to go again. Sooner rather than later, probably. It’s a thought he pushes away though, not willing to let the time any closer than it already is.

It’s easier though, because there’s another idea blooming in his mind, tentative, but taking more and more room as days pass. It’s the thought that maybe Steve could be content with just him, as he is, and not need who he was before. Maybe Bucky can be content with what hey can have. Maybe this has been a test all along, even if he didn’t mean for it to be one when he first suggested it.

***

Bucky wakes up in the middle of the night, the low hum of traffic drifting in through the open window along with the cool air of the early fall. It’s warm under the sheets and blankets, in the little cave of fabric heated by the two of them. Steve is awake too, lying on his side, just looking at him. Bucky wonders if Steve has slept at all that night. It happens to him sometimes, that he just forgets to sleep, and maybe it’s the same for Steve too.

Bucky blinks at Steve, and Steve reaches his hand to move a strand of hair off his face, the touch deliberate in a way they usually don’t allow. There are lines drawn, but they might as well not exist, and before Steve can pull his hand away, Bucky grasps a hold of it. There they are, lying on their sides facing each other, hands joined. The simplest thing in the world.

“I don’t want to remember,” Bucky says, and for once Steve doesn’t seem puzzled by his sudden admission, just waits.

“I mean, not all the time,” Bucky continues. “Just sometimes I want to not think of it all, just want to live in the now, where it’s simple.”

“I once slept straight through a century,” Steve offers in return. 

Bucky knows then Steve gets it, and he also feels his lips twitch.

“What, like the Sleeping Beauty?”

“There was no one to kiss me awake,” Steve says, smiling too. “And it wasn’t in a castle, it was a cave. I did have to scramble through a thorny thicket to get out, though.”

Bucky feels his smile growing with each detail that Steve adds, and he finally bursts into a laughter at the last bit. Steve laughs too, seemingly just because Bucky laughs, and it’s the best feeling in the world.

“Would you like to?” Bucky asks, cryptic, and Steve’s lips curve into a whole another kind of a smile.

“What, fight out of a thicket again? It wasn’t that interesting.” 

“No, not that,” Bucky says, knowing full well Steve knows what he means.

“Guess we’ll see,” Steve just says, and yawns right at his face.

***

The sun rises and Bucky wakes up with it. Steve is asleep this time, lying on his back, head turned toward Bucky, his lips slightly parted. 

The kiss is soft at first, almost tentative, just a brush of his lips against Steve’s, warm breath ghosting over skin. Steve’s hand comes to cup his neck and to hold him in place, and the kiss deepens, lips sliding against each other, Steve’s tongue flicking over Bucky’s mouth.

It’s the first time Bucky has kissed anyone in this human body, and it goes straight in his head as he lets his lips part and angles his head for better access. Steve snakes his other arm around his waist and pulls him closer, the whole of his long body against Bucky’s, strong and warm. Bucky pulls Steve to lie on his side, slots them together at hips, and for a moment they just trade kisses and move against each other, still slow with sleep.

Soon it’s not enough though, Bucky needs to feel all of Steve, and he pushes his boxers down. Steve gets on the program and just a moment later they’re back together, nothing between them, skin on skin, hard cocks sliding against each other, movement more and more frantic every passing second, kisses becoming sloppy.

Bucky’s head is full, only the sensation matters, only Steve against him and the pleasure building inside him. He’s helpless in the flood of it, all he can do is move against Steve and chase after bliss, their harsh breathing and the beat of his frantic heart the only sounds he hears.

Steve pushes Bucky on his back and settles between his legs, grinding and thrusting against him, all of his strength keeping Bucky on his back. Bucky wraps his legs around Steve’s hips, digs his fingers in his back, over his shoulder blades, and bares his throat. Steve dips his head, panting over Bucky’s skin, and it doesn’t take long before it all explodes in Bucky’s head, nothing left but Steve’s warmth and the blissful release into floating.

Bucky blinks and comes back to himself. Steve is lying on top of him, loose and relaxed, their sticky come between them. Bucky threads his fingers into Steve’s hair, and holds onto the moment, the simple perfection of it, for as long as he can.

He already knows what it means; it means everything. It’s an affirmation, and it’s a goodbye. It’s an apology, because he will have to go again.

It’s more than all that, though. It’s hope.


	9. What Now?

They get a week at the Savoy before Bucky gets too restless to stay, which in all honesty is more than Steve dared to hope for when they first got there. He still has to admit it’s disappointing when it ends, when they walk out of the hotel and go their own ways.

There’s a part of Steve that thinks he should be angry, to be pulled in and then pushed away again, but he isn’t. He can’t help but notice that the orbits are getting smaller in a way, every time they come together there’s another answer, another clue on how they can be together because of who they are now, instead of what they used to be. There’s hope now, not just gratitude of having anything that’s better than it use to be, better than he for so long assumed his eternity would be like. 

There’s hope now that it can truly be good again. It’s in the way Bucky’s smile makes Steve’s stomach flutter, in the way Bucky sent an almost desperate, apologetic glance at him when they parted. There’s hope in the way they call each other by their new names and it feels right, instead of them playing a role.

So Steve goes back to New York, settles back into his life and waits. He knows the wait in all probability will take time, and that it’ll hurt, but now there is something to wait for, and just that simple fact is exhilarating.

With that, he starts to look forward to other things, to live in this world outside of the sphere of Bucky as well. It no longer feels like a cruel joke to be alive.

He does his volunteer work, walking in the streets at night and helping people who need it and who accept it. Sometimes they turn help away, even if they need it, and Steve understands the pride, the need to be self-sufficient. He usually tries to find a way to do something for them regardless, in a roundabout way, in a way that doesn’t require them to be face to face with him.

Sometimes he gets flashes from Bucky; something he sees, a book he’s reading, a facade of a funny building, the sun glinting over a river. Red leaves in the trees, or just a reminder. Still here. Steve does the same; he sends flickers of his life to Bucky as the fall deepens and air gets colder, but they don’t see each other. 

Steve never was patient, but fourteen billion years can teach a lot, even for their kind. He can wait.

***

Sometimes Steve stands on top of the head of the Statue of Liberty with Carol and Sam as the sun sets, and they launch into the air together, race across the ocean, up into the edge of the atmosphere and down again to touch the waves. They come back to New York with the sunrise, following the edge of darkness and light, and sit on the roof of Steve’s building, laughing and talking until they’re settled back into their human skin. They usually find a diner afterward to have breakfast in, and no one pays any attention to them. It feels right to Steve.

He goes to see Tony too, sits at his workshop where he builds his robots and tinkers with classic cars and modern coffee machines. Steve likes to see him get immersed in it, the enjoyment of working with one’s hands. 

Steve used to paint, before he went to war in Europe and the subsequent withdrawal from the world for seven decades. He hasn’t picked it up again, but maybe he will now. 

At Tony’s he gets to know Pepper, Rhodey and Happy, sees how close Tony has grown to them all, and he hopes with all his heart it won’t end with unhappiness. After all, they will live and grow old, and Tony won’t. He’ll go on and on, but then, he’s done this before. Maybe he’s truly found a way to live here, has understood how to stay in the moment and enjoy happiness when it is there, to not fear the inevitable ending. Steve hasn’t, the idea of endings still paralyzes him.

***

He’s riding up in the elevator of Stark Tower again when he senses a familiar presence, and smiles to himself. He finds Nat at the top floor, curled in a large chair near the big window, looking over the city shrouded in gray November drizzle. He last saw her more than a century earlier, but she hasn’t changed at all. Her hairstyle and clothes are different, but there’s the effortless elegance that has always characterized her, ever since Steve first met her in this world. Back then she was building herself back up after escaping the void, and Steve is grateful that Bucky met her here. She’s a proof that he can make it too.

Steve pulls Nat into a hug, and it’s always a dissonant feeling when he does it, because she feels tiny in his arms, yet her presence always is colossal.

They’ve been friends for a long time now, even if it did take them a while to get comfortable with the closeness. These days being with her is easy, and he finds he doesn’t even resent her for not telling him Bucky was around. 

“To be honest, I wasn’t at all sure he wanted to stick around, and thought it would just hurt you more,” she tells him.

“That makes sense,” Steve says, and Nat looks at him, tilting her head.

“You don’t agree. I mean, you understand my point, but you don’t think it would have been like that.”

“Well, you’re half right, it would have hurt to know he was here and not to see him, but that would have still been better than thinking he was still in the void,” Steve explains, and she nods. “But I don’t think he would have wanted you to tell me, even if you’d been inclined to do so.”

“No, probably not at that point,” she agrees.

“So, it’s okay. Past is past anyway. How are you, still enjoying Russia?”

“Yeah, I suppose. It’s changing, always is, but I like the people, and the culture.”

“Have you been there all the time?”

“Not all the time, I lived in France for a while after the revolution, in the twenties and thirties, went to Moscow before the second World War.”

“And now you’re based in Saint Petersburg.”

“Yeah.” She smiles. “You should visit sometimes, and not just me.”

“I’m not sure it’s the right time.”

“Maybe. It depends, when is it ever the right time?” she asks, and Steve has nothing to say to it.

They sit in the quiet, drinking tea and looking over the city, the dusk settling and lights growing brighter.

Finally Steve breaks the silence. “Thank you.” He doesn’t explain, but she understands him anyway.

“No need to thank me. Besides, it’s helped me as well, to have someone to talk to about it.”

“I’m glad, for both of you,” Steve says.

They talk about less massive things for the rest of the night, and Steve stays until it’s time for his volunteer job.

“You should think of visiting,” she again calls after him just before the elevator doors close.

 

* * *

 

Fall turns into winter, or at least that weird state in between, when you can’t really call it fall anymore, but the snow refuses to stay on the ground so it doesn’t feel like winter either. Bucky doesn’t see Steve, hasn’t for several months, even if he’s always aware of Steve, at least in the back of his mind. 

There’s a sense of waiting, a question floating in the air. What happens now?

There are choices he can and has to make, and if he lays them out in front of him, they all seem so simple. He has to decide what he wants to be. And he has to decide whether he wants that to include Steve. Although that last one isn’t quite that simple, he knows what he wants. It’s still about whether he can.

Since he first found Steve floating in the Atlantic up until their week in London, he was unsure whether they could be together in this new world. Now he knows it’s a possibility, he’s seen that Steve looks at him and doesn’t see the ghost. Now he thinks being just himself could be enough. The thought is wonderful, and yet it paralyzes him, he admits as much to himself. He should be grabbing it with both hands, should be taking the chance, and the man he used to be would have. He knows it.

Sometimes Bucky reaches for Steve with his mind, almost instinctively, and every time he falters from saying anything that matters, doesn’t manage to let Steve feel something that would tell him the truth. Instead Bucky lets Steve see bits of his life, and gets similar things back. It’s always like that, Steve is waiting, always giving him space. 

Bucky doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it, doesn’t know what the caution means. It’s unfamiliar, because back in their own world Steve was never cautious, never hesitated. There is a part of his mind that keeps suggesting it means Steve isn’t sure, and it only paralyzes him further.

Then there’s the choice of what he wants to be, outside of Steve. He knows many of their kind have chosen to fully assimilate themselves with this world, and lived their lives as humans. Bucky understands it now, having learned what this world is like. Eternity is a long time, if nearly everyone around you will live only what amounts to a blink of an eye. It would be a relief, he thinks, to just do it, to not feel the enormity of space and the forces all around them, to know there’s end in sight.

“Did you ever consider becoming one of them?” Bucky asks Natalia once.

“What do you think?” She asks, her mouth curling into a smile. “No. I fought to be here, I’m not letting go. But what I chose doesn’t have to be your choice. We are not the same, even if we have similar experiences.”

“I don’t know what I want,” he says, knowing he’s been saying it to her ever since the beginning.

“Well, not like you’ve been here that long. It’s not really a decision that has any kind of a time frame.”

Bucky sometimes feels like he has no answers, and everything he wants the most also scares him the most. 


	10. Push

Saint Petersburg is disorienting, the way many cities are if Steve hasn’t visited them in a long time. There are many familiar sights, and more things that are new. When in London they talked about the nature and character of cities with Bucky, how they are different due to the culture and history, and Steve knew Bucky was right in his assessment. He also knows that cities change as time passes, and while most of them keep at least a part of their character, some lose it all.

Here, Steve thinks it’s not all gone, even when the city went through a stint of having a different name. Now, as he walks the streets at a leisurely pace under gently falling snow, he wonders what the city called Leningrad was like. There are reminders of that time all around, layers built on layers, different times mixing together as it always happens with cities. The huge apartment complexes are the most obvious remainder from that period, something Steve doesn’t remember from the previous time, but that he still considers familiar. He’s seen areas that feel similar in other cities. 

He walks ahead, and finds things he remembers; some narrow streets, the Winter Palace, the Smolny Cathedral, the dark surface of the Neva. The bite of the winter and the people on the streets. They are what Steve recognizes.

Steve finds Bucky at Volkovskoe, wandering among the old burial stones. Steve followed his presence there, although he isn’t quite sure why Bucky has decided to come. The place makes Steve remember everything they’ve lost. There are no physical memorials for it, nothing except for them, a few handfuls of beings too stubborn to perish.

Their eyes meet across a grave, and it feels like it’s oddly symbolical. Everything that’s gone is there, all around them in the air. They can leave the past behind for a while like they did in London, but it’s stubborn, and will always return. Alone, Steve has found it a hard time to bear it for all these years, and maybe it’ll always be hard. But perhaps they can find a way to live with it, to bear it and to be more than their combined past.

They look at each other, and it’s one of those moments, a crossroads where one choice might mean everything. It’s the first time Steve has come to find Bucky instead of the other way around. It’s the first time Steve has pushed instead of giving space, and now he thinks maybe it’s another piece slotting in place. There is a doubt he can see dissipating from Bucky’s eyes.

***

There’s a common theme in both their apartments, namely that they don’t have too many things. Bucky has a mattress with pillows and quilts in the corner, an old couch that seats two with a push, an ornamental table, and not much more. They drink tea sitting cross-legged on the floor, and don’t put the lights on even as darkness falls. The hum of the traffic from below is muted, and it’s like they’re in their own little world.

They talk but they don’t, not of anything of consequence. It’s much like their first days in London. Back then they’d been adjusting to each other, and now they are adjusting to everything else while being together, the heaviness of history. As the room grows darker, they gradually find it doesn’t feel like an impossible burden to bear. Neither one of them says the words, but they both know it.

It’s a cold clear night, and Bucky tugs Steve to the balcony when most of the lights in the neighborhood have gone out as the city sleeps. They shift their form at the same time, and let their wings carry them up. They’re not going anywhere, just floating in the air high above the city.

It’s different from any other time flying with Bucky here; there’s no pressing purpose, and they’re not joining their minds either. They just float, fingertips touching each other, and Steve finally lets himself look.

Bucky carries his injuries to his human form, the prosthetic left arm and markings on his skin. In his own form it’s not just the left arm that’s new, it’s the wing too, color of steel with hints of red in it instead of the pearly gray where light makes rainbows of his right wing. Steve always thought Bucky was beautiful inside and out, and he still is. Steve lets himself look, and makes himself stop thinking of the pain and fire, just the new form.

He reaches his other hand to Bucky as well and pulls his left palm onto his chest, right where he’s the most vulnerable. They stay like that as they slowly float down, and settle back onto Bucky’s balcony. They stay in the same position as they shift back, Bucky’s metal hand over Steve’s beating human heart in the form he has chosen, still the most vulnerable, but also the strongest part of him.

They look at each other in the eyes, and it’s as if another new door has opened, another possibility. 

As the eastern sky begins to lighten, they go back inside and curl up together on Bucky’s mattress, quilts drawn tight around them. They fall asleep with Bucky’s left palm still resting over Steve’s heart, and it feels like protection, like a shield.

 

* * *

 

“Where did the stories come from?” Bucky asks the next day, when the apartment is filled with gray light of winter.

They haven’t gotten up yet, they’re still curled up with each other, as if moving will shatter the tentative strands of something building between them. 

Bucky doesn’t have to explain what he means; the ever present ones about angels and war and falling, the ones that have names that echo in his mind. It unsettled him the first time he heard of them, but so far he hasn’t asked about it from anyone. Here in the comfortable warmth under his blankets, Steve’s heart beating under his palm he thinks he can handle the answer.

“Back when we came here, when this universe was new,” Steve begins, “it was only a small part of our kind that made through. But you know how many of us there were, so even a tiny fraction is still a lot of individuals.”

“What happened to all of them? Because I’ve looked, and I know there aren’t many more than ten of us here.”

“Time, you might say. In the beginning all there was were hydrogen clouds and potential, and it was such a shock after our rich world that some of us couldn’t handle it. They just chose to dissolve among the space. The rest of us wandered around and waited; we saw stars being born and die, saw fusion reactions and supernovas create more complex atoms, ones that would be needed for building worlds. It takes a lot of time just to get to a point where planets can form, a lot longer for life to exist. So mostly we waited.”

Steve pauses for a moment, and Bucky remembers back when he joined minds with Steve here, thinks of the sense of time and waiting and loneliness.

“I’m glad you chose to stay,” he says, and means it more than he ever has anything.

Steve places his hand over Bucky’s resting on his chest and squeezes before continuing.

“Even before this planet existed, we could feel the potential around here, we knew this would become a world to live in instead of just existing among the stars. We were here when the Sun was just beginning to shine and the planet was a loose collection of rocks. It still took a long time after that, and some of us got bored maybe, and left to see other places, other stars. They’re too far to reach now, even if they’re still alive.

“The ones of us that made it until the human beings appeared usually started living among them, and in time most chose to leave behind our immortal form and to become like them, with shorter lifespans.”

“Do you think they were happier that way?” Bucky asks, and Steve looks at him for the first time that morning.

“I don’t know. I mean, I hope so, since it’s what they chose. It’s not something you can back out of. I guess it can be a relief, to know it’s not going to last forever.”

“I suppose,” Bucky agrees, and again turns the idea in his mind, the possibility to be something else, something not doomed to eternity.

“Anyway,” Steve continues his story, “I can’t prove it, but I suspect that those who became humans ended up telling the story of our war, and in time it morphed into the stories of angels. The same story stemming from multiple sources over time, it’s not hard to see why people would implement it into their belief systems.”

They fall into silence again, just laying there skin against skin, and Bucky feels completely content, maybe for the first time since he arrived from the void. Now he’s not pretending to be something else, everything is acknowledged, and yet they can just stay like this, together with Steve.

This is what he wants, Bucky finally admits to himself. He doesn’t want his old life back, it’s no use and he’s too much a different man anyway. He wouldn’t fit into the careless happiness of their youth. But Steve isn’t the same either, and despite all they’ve been through, they still fit, they’re still drawn together. 

Bucky wants it, but he can’t say it yet, can’t even let Steve see the thought inside his head. There are still too many doubts, too many what ifs. What if this world too breaks into pieces? What I there’s another fall waiting? The thought paralyzes him, and it’s why he stays quiet, breathing in time with Steve.

The only thing he doesn’t doubt is love, the love between the two of them, because it never was in question. Neither one of them ever stopped loving each other. They just had to learn that sometimes love isn’t enough to protect from heartbreak.

The short winter day passes, and as the sky is darkening they finally get up. Steve tugs Bucky to the balcony, the shock of cold refreshing, even if he starts shivering almost immediately. Steve pulls him close, gentle but insistent, and kisses him, lips sliding over Bucky’s, his tongue hot when it slips into Bucky’s mouth. The contrast of the cold air and Steve’s warm mouth is incredible, it goes straight into Bucky’s head, and he surrenders himself to it, just lets the moment carry him.

Steve doesn’t pull away as he shifts, and it’s like a buzz of electricity on Bucky’s skin, lingering when he opens his eyes to nod his goodbyes to Steve who heads out again, streaking across the sky.


	11. Ask for Everything

Steve gets himself new painting supplies, and much as it must be for humans too, at first it feels like his hand doesn’t know how to follow his eye, how to fill the canvas with the images he sees. Steve has spent decades just painting, he stayed in Florence in the fifteenth century when Lorenzo de Medici sponsored arts, and in Paris in the nineteenth century during the birth of Impressionism. He remembers how easy it used to be, and the comparison is fairly frustrating, but he knows it’ll get better. Besides, it’s not like he has much else to do as he waits for Bucky.

Earlier his waiting was anxious and uncertain, but now he feels calm and hopeful. He still trusts his instincts, and they’re telling him to be patient. He’s done what he can he thinks, he’s made his choice. Now it’s up to Bucky to make his.

One day the twins visit him, introducing themselves as Wanda and Pietro now. They, much as Thor, haven’t really settled into living as humans, as most of their kind have. Instead they’re usually moving about and spending much larger part of their time in their original form than they do in human form. They’ve left their old names behind same as the rest of them, though.

Steve has always thought that the two of them are the happiest out of all his kind, and he suspects they will be the the last ones left in the end. After all, they have everything they want in each other, and the loss of their world never hit them as hard as it did the rest of them. Steve always likes to spend time with them, and part of it is that they understand what it is like to know someone inside out, because they’ve always lived in each other’s minds. It’s not quite like it was for Steve and Bucky, who were two beings that came together, whereas the twins have always felt more like one being occupying two bodies.

Twins didn’t really happen with their kind; it was so rare that they didn’t even have a specific word for it. After all, since they weren’t flesh and blood like humans, they procreated by two (or sometimes more, but it took at least two) of them literally wishing a new child into being. Usually it was just one child at a time, but Wanda and Pietro apparently refused to be alone, from the first moment of their potential.

They’re happy and excited as always, planning on taking a trip to the stars, and Steve hopes they will never have to know the pain of separation and loss like he has.

***

In time, Steve finds the flow of painting again, and with it he remembers why he has often returned to it. It’s almost like watching thunderstorms in that when he paints it’s easy to focus on just the canvas and the colors, to not think of anything else.

He surfaces at midday after painting all morning, a scene of snow and ice glittering with the glow of setting sun finished on his canvas, and it’s only then he realizes he’s not alone. Bucky is leaning to the wall just inside the door, waiting, almost expressionless. He speaks as soon as Steve’s attention is on him.

“I keep thinking, what if this world ends too. What if it gets torn apart like ours did?”

Steve isn’t quite sure where Bucky is getting at with this, but he knows the truth is the only way to move forward. He puts away his palette and brushes, goes to Bucky and takes a hold of his hands. He gets smudges of paint on them, but he suspects neither one of them cares.

“Thing is, Bucky, it will,” Steve says, his voice gentle. “Maybe not like ours, but in time it will. The stars will die and entropy and gravity will rip the universe apart and fold it together. There will be an end. Maybe we’ll still be here then, maybe not, but the universe will move about its course.”

It’s like something is sliding inside Bucky, a weight moving, and finally it’s gone. Steve doesn’t know what exactly it was since he’s not in Bucky’s mind, but he knows with all the certainty that shedding it is a good thing. He grasps Bucky’s hands tighter and pulls him close, resting their foreheads together.

Steve doesn’t say it, but there’s a promise that he makes quietly in his head. He promises himself that whenever this universe ends, it won’t mean a loss and separation. Whatever happens, their paths will stay together.

 

* * *

 

It’s an odd thing about fear, Bucky thinks, the kind of abstract one he’s been carrying, that when Steve acknowledges it, makes it real, it suddenly isn’t such a huge thing. Suddenly it becomes just another thing to deal with. Maybe that’s what it means to live, to go on; to acknowledge everything and to not let them get you down.

It’s getting dark outside and they’re laying on the rug in the middle of Steve’s apartment. Bucky’s head is resting on Steve’s bare stomach, and he’s staring through the window, watching snowflakes float down. It’ll be uncomfortable soon, he knows, his human body will recognize it’s cold and that the floor isn’t soft at all. For now he doesn’t care, just lays there and enjoys the feeling of Steve’s fingers in his hair.

It would be impossible to fully leave behind what he’s been through, what he’s lost. He almost lost everything he cared about, he really did lose everything for a while, including himself. Those losses and experiences will always be there, because the past will always leave a mark, even those parts he can’t fully remember. They leave their mark by the absence of knowing, and Bucky can’t decide what is worse, the things he does remember, or the loss of those he doesn’t.

It’s useless to try and be rid of the past, he knows it probably better than most people. He’s also starting to think it’s no use trying to change the future, to worry about what might happen. Steve has lived longer than Bucky has, at least in a way that matters, and he’s had time to learn it for himself. The future will come, and all one can do is to try and make it through, to work around it. Steve is teaching it now to Bucky, and he is trying to listen, because he wants to believe.

The underlying truth is that if the future will come anyway, one shouldn’t let it dictate the choices now. One shouldn’t let it stop one to try and find happiness.

If only it was as easy in practice as it’s in theory.

For all that Steve was the one to graft strategies in their war, and did so here in the second World War too, at least based on the histories, Bucky was always the one that tried to look forward and plan for every eventuality. Steve always acknowledged that there were things he couldn’t plan for, accepted the possibility of the unseen. Maybe that was what made him so successful, made it possible for him to move. Bucky sees it now, in himself the way he is and the way he was, that without Steve just going he might have always stayed frozen in place, worrying about things he couldn’t do anything about.

It’s still the same, he sees it now. For all that he knows Steve has had a hard time getting through the billions of years he’s spent in this universe, he still has been moving on, hasn’t let the obstacles stop him. Maybe not always in the best ways, but he has made it through.

Now that Bucky too is in this world, what he has is a possibility, and he has a choice; to squander it with doubt, or to seize it.

There are several choices he needs to make, and maybe he already made the big one when he decided he never wants to go back. Now he needs to follow that desire to a place where that possibility is the smallest. One way to do so would be to become a human, to live through a life as one of them and then pass on. He doesn’t deny the thought is enticing, after all a definite end does sound like a relief, and yet, an ending is a scary thing too. He could wake up one day and regret it, but that’s true of all choices.

It finally gets cold, and Steve coaxes Bucky into coming with him to the bed. Same as in Bucky’s apartment, it’s just a mattress on the floor and no bed frame, but there are plenty of pillows and a fluffy duvet, and they’re perfectly warm in seconds. They’re lying on their side, Steve spooned behind Bucky, his nose tucked against Bucky’s neck so that when he speaks, the buzz tickles.

“They’re not so different here, compared to us,” Steve says. “There are always people who don’t like how the society functions, and who will try to mold it to their liking. Sometimes the push back ends in fighting and blood and tears.”

“They can’t literally rip the universe apart though, like happened in our war,” Bucky points out, the memories of trying to fight back, trying to repair the rifts that continuously appeared still clear, after all the time that’s passed.

“No, but I don’t think it makes a difference for them; they can still kill all life on this planet, if it gets that far. From their perspective it doesn’t matter if the planet goes on after.”

“So what you’re saying is that people everywhere are just the same, the destruction inevitable.”

“No,” Steve says, with the sincere conviction that has always gotten to Bucky. “What I’m saying is we, and everyone, need to be aware of it, and try to do our best to live so it won’t happen. Our people failed, but it doesn’t mean the people here will. That’s left for the future to decide.”

“And in the meantime, what should we do?” Bucky asks.

“Our best, the same as we always have,” Steve says, his lips brushing Bucky’s neck. “You’ve already come so far, making it back here.”

“I still have no idea how it happened,” Bucky confesses. “For so long, even after I was alone, I was just drifting. I don’t know what happened to everyone else. Suddenly I was just awake, pulling myself together. There were weapons, old ones, scattered around and I used them to replace what I lost in the fire. There was a gate, you know that, and suddenly I was here, in this world. I remember pulling myself through because it felt like this was the place to be, but I don’t know how.”

“I guess it was just what needed to happen. This is where you belong,” Steve says, tightening his arms around Bucky.

“You hate all the destiny crap,” Bucky just says and enjoys the rumble of Steve’s laughter against his back.

The morning comes and it’s a bright day the way it is in the winter, sky pale blue and endless, ice crystals adorning the windows. Bucky wakes up warm wrapped in Steve’s arms, and he still doesn’t know how to ask the question that’s on his mind. But maybe, he thinks, he needs to work up to it.

“Come to Saint Petersburg with me,” he says and holds his breath, waiting for the answer.

“Anywhere,” Steve says against his skin, and maybe he’s answering a whole another question.


	12. Eternity

It’s snowing in Saint Petersburg, gray clouds stretching from horizon to horizon, snowflakes falling at a steady rate that doesn’t feel like much but will accumulate over hours. Steve and Bucky are standing in the middle of Bucky’s apartment, only inches away from each other, fingertips the only place they’re actually touching.

Here in this world Bucky has hands that are never quite the same temperature, the metal one always colder or hotter than the rest of him. He has blue eyes and brown hair carelessly gathered back, long strands escaping to frame his face. Steve wants to look at him for an eternity, wants to be sure he knows every detail of this new Bucky as well as he used to know the young man he grew up with.

It’s the middle of the night, quiet all around them, and Steve needs nothing else. It’s the third time Bucky has asked him for something, and the first time it didn’t come with a condition. There’s nothing to achieve, nothing to hide. Here they are, every part of them, all their history and everything that’s still ahead, and Bucky asked him to come with him, so of course Steve did. It’s the one choice that has always been easy for him.

Bucky shifts and grasps Steve’s hands, holding them gently in his own.

“You said anywhere, did you really mean it?” Bucky asks.

Steve’s heart wants to break with the question, he wants Bucky to know he did mean it, does mean it and will for the rest of his life, until the end of his days. He understands the doubt, he’s seen into Bucky’s heart and mind and soul, and he knows why it is for him so hard to believe. It shouldn’t be, but then, a lot of things that shouldn’t be still are.

Steve is going to say it, for as often as necessary, every day, every hour for the rest of their lives, however long that may be if Bucky needs him to. This is a burden he can easily bear.

“Literally anywhere. If you’ll have me, I’ll follow you wherever,” Steve says.

“Even if I wanted to leave this planet and spend the rest of the lifespan of this universe floating in empty space?”

“Yes.”

“Even if I chose to become a human and live my life and die, would you still want to do it with me?”

“Yes,” Steve says, and his heart sings, because these are not just things Bucky imagines, this is Bucky really asking. “If that’s what you want, then I’ll live with you as a human and there’ll be no one happier.”

Bucky keeps looking at him, steady and serious, and even though Steve holds himself open, Bucky doesn’t look into his head. Steve understands; this world is different, as are they. Here, it all needs to be voiced out. 

They’re silent, just looking at each other, and Steve can see the shift, the moment when Bucky believes, the moment he decides.

“I used to think I’d spend an eternity with you,” Bucky says, “because that was supposed to be our lot, an eternity of peace. And it was all I wanted.”

Steve knows this, he’s been in Bucky’s mind countless times, and yet, hearing it said out loud is different. It’s more real somehow, it fills him with warmth and overflowing happiness.

“We were robbed of an eternity,” Bucky continues, and Steve knows this is his choice. “I want to try and get it back.”

Steve pulls Bucky to him, flush against his body, so close that when he speaks his lips brush over Bucky’s.

“If I learned anything from the war,” Steve says, “it’s that there are no guarantees for eternity. But however much time we have, belongs to you. It was always yours.”

“That’s good enough,” Bucky says. “More than, really.”

 

* * *

 

Steve’s lips are right there, and Bucky kisses him even if he can’t decide whether he wants to do so or just laugh out of happiness. He feels light, and somehow it’s better than even when he was young and had no cares in the world, because now he knows so much more, now there’s pain for contrast. It makes this new perfection shine so much brighter.

It’s not something that just happened randomly, it’s a decision he made. He decided just now to let go of his fear and to trust in himself, to trust in Steve. He decided to grab a hold of his chance for happiness, because he knows now he’d only regret it if he didn’t.

Looking back just half a year, it seems nearly unbelievable how far he’s come. Back then he couldn’t see this possibility, couldn’t make himself believe that they would still fit together with Steve despite everything that has happened. It took him a while to get here, even after he started to see the possibility, and he’s grateful that Steve didn’t stop trying. Not that he expected Steve to give up, he’s always been the most stubborn person Bucky knows.

Now they’re here, and maybe they will have millions and billions of years to look forward to and be together, maybe only a blink, but Bucky wants nothing else. He can’t see all of the future, but now the possibilities he sees are no longer the dark and terrible ones.

Bucky swallows the laughter and keeps kissing Steve, because it’s still the best feeling, the simple intimacy. Steve slides his hands under Bucky’s shirt and presses his fingers into Bucky’s back, mapping out the muscles and ribs, and Bucky is nearly lost in the sensation, the surprising newness of it.

They pause the kissing to scramble out of their clothes and fall onto Bucky’s mattress, and Bucky wraps his left arm around Steve’s waist, pulls him close and ducks low to take Steve’s nipple in his mouth, feels it marbling into hardness. Steve lets out a sigh and rolls onto his back, pulling Bucky on top of him. His deft fingers are in Bucky’s hair, drawing lines onto his scalp, and Bucky hears himself let out an involuntary moan. 

He is almost confused in his happiness, feeling wonderful and yet wanting more, wanting to be closer to Steve, but he doesn’t quite know how to get there. He rubs his erection against Steve’s, delighting in how Steve’s head falls back and dips down to suck a mark on his throat. Every sound Steve makes vibrates against Bucky’s lips and tongue, and he wants more.

Steve’s hands are gentle at his jaw, pulling Bucky up to look at Steve. He’s beautiful lying there on Bucky’s pillows; his hair a mess, flush high on cheeks and eyes blown nearly black. Steve’s lips are red and shiny and Bucky makes to kiss him again, but doesn’t manage it with the hold Steve has on him. He lets out a displeased sound, and Steve laughs at him a little.

“Hold on a second,” Steve says, almost breathless. “Can we try something?”

Steve doesn’t elaborate, but before Bucky has time to get confused, he feels Steve nudge at his mind, and the rightness of the idea floods over him. The walls he’s kept around his mind come down like water, because of course this is it, this is what they need. 

They’ve done it countless times, let their minds meld and envelope each other. Hence it’s familiar, but when Steve pulls Bucky down to kiss him, the sensation explodes in his head. It’s wonderful, and not just for himself, he feels Steve too, the echoes of their arousal chasing after each other, colliding and amplifying. Bucky goes nearly limp over Steve, surprised and blissed out. Steve isn’t any more coherent, he’s panting into Bucky’s mouth, his fingers clutching at Bucky’s back. 

Bucky draws a breath and dives in again, kisses Steve again, because even if it feels like drowning, it’s kind kind of drowning he welcomes. Steve groans against his lips and rolls them on their side, slips his hand between them and takes a hold of their cocks, fingers tight just the right way. Steve sets a fast pace, because they’re falling and there’s no stopping it now.

They breathe the same air, and Bucky doesn’t know where he stops and Steve begins, not that he cares at that moment. All he knows is it’s perfect, more than he ever expected, and their orgasm peaks at the same time, the building tightness crests and they slide into bliss.

After he’s recovered a little, enough to know what’s him and what’s Steve, Bucky finally laughs at the perfection of it all. Steve kisses him again before relaxing, his arm heavy over Bucky, face tucked against his neck.

 

* * *

 

They rebuild the barriers around them, but this time they leave them open for each other. Steve at first thinks it should take a while to get used to it again. After all, he’s spent a lot longer without Bucky than with him, but it turns out to not be the case. It feels like coming home. 

It’s only after the fact that he truly realizes how much he missed Bucky’s presence, and the retroactive pain for something that’s already in the past leaves him shaking. Bucky wraps him in his arms, envelopes Steve’s mind with his own, and they wait for their new reality to settle in.

Things always leak over between them, and even if Bucky showed Steve everything he’d been through that first night they met on this Earth, it’s only after a prolonged exposure that Steve gains a true understanding of it. It’s not even that he’s purposefully looking, more that bits and pieces come and go, since the time in the void isn’t ever that far from Bucky’s consciousness. Steve hopes in time it’ll fade.

What he does come to understand is that since there isn’t really time in the void, Bucky’s perception of time that passed in there is shorter than Steve’s. It’s a small relief, but still something, the early empty eons of the universe were a difficult time for Steve, so much time passed while almost nothing that could hold his attention happened. In the void it would have been so much worse. It does cause a curious misalignment in their minds sometimes, when the years press on Steve, and for Bucky there’s nothing, but it’s a small price to pay.

They can also help each other with it. Since they get overwhelmed in different ways, it’s easier for the other to compensate.

***

They take walks, sometimes meet with Nat, and Steve gets reacquainted with the city. He paints and Bucky takes up cooking, determined to get Steve to enjoy the life they have. Steve doesn’t say that he doesn’t need convincing, not now that they’re together, and it feels like all the colors of the universe are fresher, that the stars are shining brighter than he’s ever seen. Of course, he doesn’t have to tell. Bucky knows it regardless.

It’s such a simple thing, happiness. It’s also something that doesn’t just happen, Steve knows now. One has to work for it. Even after Bucky came back, there was no automatic guarantee that they’d get where they are now, at their third beginning, after meeting as children, after looking at each other and knowing what love was. They had to want to end up here, and they did. Steve makes a pledge to always remember, to never take it for granted, because happiness can slip away as easily as it comes.

Steve makes a pledge to himself, but really it’s for both of them, Bucky’s consciousness humming along with his. They’re happy, and it’s a hard won happiness they will never let go.

 

* * *

 

It’s a funny thing how the perception of time has started to matter to Bucky, how dates have become important, even if the passage of time is counted very differently here than it was in their own world. There it hadn’t been tied to any single planetary cycle, because their kind lived on multiple planets, and a few non-planets as well. They had a timekeeping system that was outside of all that.

Still, here Bucky has settled into the passage of days and seasons, and he knows the day when it’s been exactly a year since he arrived. It’s been a year of becoming for him, a year of deciding what he wants to be and being that. He started as a shell of a being, barely conscious, and here he is now, living and happy. He knows a gift when he gets one, and he’s reminded of what Steve’s mother used to say, that there’s always a balance to things. Bucky figures that he and Steve are owed a lot of happiness to balance for all they’ve been through. He knows the universe doesn’t always come through with that promise, but he’s already decided he’s not going to worry unduly.

That anniversary they take to flight, and go back to Siberia. It’s Bucky’s third time there, and the site looks about the same as it did when he first arrived. It’s different too. Now he can see much more than he did then, the wonder of how life manages to survive through the harsh winters. It’s dark, and the stars are like diamonds against the black night sky, billions and billions of them, near and far.

Bucky looks at the place where he first stepped into this side of reality, and knows he’s finally at home again, even if it’s not the one he was born into. It’s good enough. It’s as perfect as he could hope for.

Steve smiles at him and takes a hold of his hand. They rise up into the air, from the freezing winter to the empty coldness of space. The Milky Way surrounds them, and below them the Earth is a cluster of different kinds of stars, living beings with shining souls. 

It’s their home now and it’s beautiful. Bucky settles his mind against Steve’s, content. It’s not what he dreamed of when he was young, but he’ll take it. He has what’s always been the most important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, successfully withing the planned posting schedule!
> 
> I had a good time with this, hope you all had too.
> 
> Finally, even if I never explicitly mentioned them in the fic, I did figure out angel parallels for all the superheroes. I made a post of it on tumblr [right here](http://stellahibernis.tumblr.com/post/155438725252/if-theres-a-reason-im-still-alive-is-a-loose), since I rambled more than I like to do in the notes here. Some of them are fairly obvious I think, other took some digging.


End file.
